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- [00:00]
A
What's up, guys? We have an awesome episode of Sweat. I agree for you today. So I just interviewed the two founders of Beekman 1802. It's a 300 million dollar a year beauty brand in Ulta Target. All these different places they sold in 2021 for hundreds of millions of dollars. And all I asked them was, how did you build such a good community? How'd you build a lasting brand? They talked about all these different ways. They went above and beyond. Beauty is obviously a very saturated category. And everything they did was taken that next step. Step in order to stand out from that crowded space. So without further ado, let's get into the show.
- [00:32]
B
Hi, everybody. I'm Brent, this is Josh.
- [00:35]
C
And we are the founders of Beekman 1802. We were two New York City guys. A lot of my former colleagues are here tonight. I worked in advertising and marketing for many years and I, I wrote a few books. And Brent was a doctor and he worked at Mount Sinai Hospital. And then he was so good that Martha Stewart stole him away to start her health and wellness division of her company. And in 2006, we were driving in upstate New York and we found a little farm. This was just like a vacation weekend trip. We found this little farm.
- [01:08]
B
It was about this time of year, wasn't it?
- [01:10]
C
It was, it was October 10th. And we fell in love with it. We bought it. And then right after we purchased it, we got a letter in our mailbox from a neighbor. His name was Farmer John. And he was losing his farm and he had 100 goats and he had nowhere to bring them. So he wrote us a letter and he said, can I move into. You've got an empty little house there. You've got a barn. Can I bring my goats? And he said yes again. It was just going to be a weekend thing. He was a caretaker. And then 2008 came, big recession. We both lost our jobs within 30 days of each other. And we had no income. This brand new farm and mortgage and no money coming in. So we literally googled what can we make with goat milk. And the first thing that came up was soap. So we started making goat milk Soap back in 2008.
- [02:00]
B
And now we've sold 60 million bars of that soap.
- [02:02]
A
Yeah. Seems like it worked out pretty well.
- [02:04]
C
Yeah.
- [02:04]
A
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a very old farm. Right. Beekman 1802 comes from the name of William Beekman.
- [02:13]
B
That's right. Who built the farm?
- [02:14]
A
Right, Right. So he built the farm in 18 oh, two, that's right. He was like senator or what was his role?
- [02:20]
B
That's right. So he. He was an orphaned when he on the sea, when he was coming over to the. To the States, and originally started trading on the river in Canajoharie, which is the next village over from Sharon Springs, and just started growing his business and originally built his original mercantile on the property where the farm is standing and just became very, very Promine. Farm is located is just outside of what was called the Lunenburg Turnpike, which was the last mapped road out of the northeast. And so all the wagon trains that were heading out west from Boston, Philly, they would stop at his store to fill up, you know, until they could get out a little bit further. So that was the source of his wealth. The name became a senator. And the first.
- [03:05]
C
I love. I love the full circle moment of like this. This big cheese business guy in like 1802, he had 10 kids. None of them lived beyond 30. And so his bloodline died out pretty fast. So I just love this idea. Like, 225 later is like years later, William Beekman is having another moment he never could have predicted.
- [03:25]
A
William Beakman is so back right now. So something we talk about on the podcast quite a bit is finding your point of differentiation, right? It's how do you stand out in a saturated market? There's a few different ways. I think you guys have nailed all of them. I mean, beauty is one of the most saturated categories of all time. It's very hard to distinguish things. The first one I want to talk about is positioning. So you are a doctor, correct? Confirmed. Right?
- [03:55]
B
Correct. My special is in longevity and aging.
- [03:57]
A
Excellent. So what was kind of this, I guess, breakthrough insight into finding the ingredient that would solve your customers problems? Because I think it's really core to your marketing. A lot of reason why you're successful.
- [04:10]
B
Yeah. Well, when we first started the company, you know, I had come from Martha Stewart and so really had an understanding of lifestyle branding and going back to William Beekman. The reason the name of the company is Beekman 1802 and not Josh and Brent is because we had seen what happened to a company if it was too singularly focused on the founder. And so we were very clear from the very beginning we didn't want it ourselves names to be associated with the company. And that's how we came up with Beekman 1802, actually modeled after Chanel number five. So it had this immediate sense of legacy and history to it. And when we started the company, we were a lifestyle company so we had several different verticals. We had a beauty which was always the biggest vertical, but we also did gourmet foods. We worked with over 300 regional artisans in our community from blacksmiths to glassblowers to weavers design product with them. We had a gardening section and, and our idea was that every quarter of the year we would launch a new product or innovation or design in one of those categories because we didn't have any money for marketing at the time. And we said okay, we just have to constantly be get earned media in the press. So we'd always work each quarter to have something in each category. And beauty was always the biggest. We had our first national partnership with Anthropologie and they rolled out the original bars of soap to all their stores. And they helped us develop our first four beauty items based on information that their customers were giving them. And then we got the opportunity to go on TV retail with this very tiny like third ranked TV retailer. It was called Evine at the time. Then it was Shop, HM Shop, NBC. And we went on not knowing anything about selling at all. Live sailing and we were just scrolling through the TV guide at the time and looking at qvc, hsn, Evine and we said okay, what's going to make people stop on a channel if they see two middle aged guys selling beauty products first?
- [06:23]
C
We've realized that was the biggest challenge in TV retail because we've all, we've all been there, right? We've all been like in a hotel like clicking through and you, well if.
- [06:30]
B
You'Re ever a certain age, that's true.
- [06:31]
C
When you click through and you, you hit HSN or qvc.
- [06:34]
B
Brian does not do that.
- [06:35]
A
And it's like I'm actually just scrolling Tik Tok.
- [06:38]
C
Yeah, Tik Tok shop. I own a td. I'm boys board people. So you're, you know, you're going through and we're like what is going to get people to stop? And when we did the training for TV retail it was all like, you know, you have to dress professionally. If you're people are inviting you in their living room, you need to act a certain way. And you know, and we're like that's not going to make cause people to stop. So we thought we're just going to bring baby goats on air and it's live. We're going to let them do whatever they want to do. We've had goats, you know, poop on air, pee on air, hump each other on Air it like had everything happen. But that was we, that first we identified the problem, the challenge, which was to get people to stop and watch. And then the solutions came. But you know, it really is all about how we had no money every step of the way and what are we going to do to stop people and make them pay attention?
- [07:31]
B
Because really at that point, now we talk about people's attention spans or eight or three seconds, you have three seconds to capture their attention. It was the same back then as well. What was going to make them stop on the channel long enough to say, what are they talking about? We launched on Evine and within six months we were the number one brand on that network. And that gave us so much customer information for many, many reasons. One, when you're selling on live TV or any type of live selling, you're getting immediate customer feedback. So if you're showing a particular feature of a product, you can see what response you get. If you're, if you, some odd thing comes out of your mouth and the sales spike, you're like, wow, I need to go back to that. Or the producer actually tell you, you need to go back to that. So, so we're learning that kind of free market research, real time market research. And then it also opened up enough customer base that we could really start getting anecdotal reports of how people were experiencing the product, what it was doing for their skin. And that's really when we really pivoted from being a lifestyle company into a pure play beauty company. Because people started saying, wow, this is really changing my skin. Particularly people who had really sensitive skin, eczema, psoriasis, something like that. And so then that just piqued my curiosity and I said, why would that be? And so then, because we had cash flow now from having these sales on tv, retail, I'm like, we really need to double down and invest in researching the goat milk. And so that's when we really started looking at how the goat milk influences the barrier of the skin, the microbiome of the skin. And that's how we became a true beauty player. But I will say, and we tell this story in the book, we still didn't really, we still really weren't clear on our positioning until we got ready to go into Ulta. And this was in 2020?
- [09:28]
C
Yeah, 20. Yeah, 2020. And we actually, we hired an outside branding agency and a lot of my friends and colleagues from advertising now, they're like, well, this is what you did, you branded companies for your entire life. Why would you hire an outside agency. And the saying that I remember one of my mentors saying was, you can't just drive the mountain you're standing on. And that is so true of all founders and entrepreneurs. You can build something and you can make it really big, but the thing that you build, the mountain you're standing on, you can't describe it. You can't describe how high it is. You can't describe the shape it is. You have to be standing at a distance. So it was really this outside branding agency that came in and said, you guys are not about. You're not selling soap, you're selling kindness. Because that was really the core of our brand.
- [10:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome. Getting clear on the narrative and all that stuff. But. And the product works, right? I mean, that's also a key component here is like you were solving a direct problem for a lot of people.
- [10:28]
B
Correct. If you are a sensitive skin person or you've overused other products, we have a solution for you. Yeah. And that's a very easy customer promise to make, particularly on social media.
- [10:40]
A
Yeah.
- [10:42]
C
I'd like to go on record though, to say you were talking about TV retail. I invented the soap money shot.
- [10:49]
B
You did. People now try to replicate it.
- [10:52]
C
It's true. For years.
- [10:53]
A
The soap money shot.
- [10:54]
C
The Soap money shot.
- [10:55]
A
YouTube is about to ban us.
- [10:57]
C
That's it. I know, I know.
- [10:58]
B
He's the sudster.
- [10:59]
C
I'm known. He's a. Known as circus, as the sud star. The soap star. The lather daddy. But for years on TV retail, people would suds in a little bowl, people who were selling soap or shower gel suds in a little bowl. And they'd show you the suds and all that. And we were. So I did it too, because everybody else did it. And then I was talking one day and I sort of lost, wasn't paying attention. And it started like flowing over the edge in this like slow motion globular sud thing. And in the ear, the producer's like, it, keep it going, do it again. The phones are lighting up. Phones are lighting up. So I invented this money shot and now everybody does this soda shot.
- [11:36]
A
Awesome. I mean, couple of things that are kind of funny is we've talked about how y' all were on live TV retail media, and you had to stop the scroll. It's exactly what you have to do in today's day and age on social. You know, what Josh just eloquently described is a kind of ASMR moment. Right. A striking visual, which is something we tell all of our creators to incorporate into their hearts, too. I want to pivot real quick because you have a really interesting background. Brent, did not know you were friends with Martha Stewart.
- [12:12]
B
That's right. Friend and mentor.
- [12:14]
A
Yeah.
- [12:15]
B
And we tell this story in the book as well. When I was right, after I graduated from business school, I went to Stern here in the city. I had gone back to work at Mount Sinai and was doing part patient care, part education of medical students, and part administrative work. And one of my objectives in the administrative role was to create a new center for the Study of Aging at Mount Sinai Hospital. And this had been a project that had been in the works for over a decade, but academic positions are not good at those types of projects. And so it really hadn't gone anywhere. So I said, okay, how can I get this off the ground? And I said, you know, before anybody in New York City will want to donate the money for this center, I need to have a great design. Right. And so I sat down and made a list of all the star architects I could think of, and I.M. pei was one of them. And at the time, he was in his 80s and was still, you know, working. And it was very important to us when we're creating the center, that in every aspect of the center, we were demonstrating that just because you get older doesn't mean you're not productive. And so I wrote this letter to I.M. pei, and three days later, I came out of an exam room from seeing a patient, and my secretary said, There's a Mr. Pei on the phone to talk to you. And I picked up the phone, and he said, I read your letter, and I would love to work on this project. And so worked with him, came up this beautiful concept. And then I said, okay, let me make another list of people in New York City who could fund this center. And of course, there are lots of people who might want their name on a building at Mount Sinai. But again, we wanted to have someone who also represented good aging. And at the time, Martha. I think I forget how she was maybe 60 at the time. I don't remember. And I do remember that she had just gone to prison. And Martha Stewart.
- [14:14]
A
The thug.
- [14:14]
B
Yeah, exactly. And New York magazine had Post, had published a little essay about Martha Stewart in prison and what she was going to do in prison.
- [14:23]
C
It was like a little satirical thing. And it had, if you want to send her a care package, this is the address. And it was like, prisoner number 10509 West Alderson, Virginia. And so Brent is like, I'm going to write her. And so he drew up this entire business plan of why she should fund this center, how she is a great sign of healthy aging. And then she could have a whole new business vertical. Wrote this whole business plan. And then he thought, well, she's getting all these letters in prison, of course, Thousands and thousands. So he put it in an X ray envelope from Mount Sinai Hospital, an oversized one. And I don't know about you, but if I got an X ray envelope from Mount Sinai, it'd be the first thing I opened.
- [15:03]
B
I had to stop the scroll.
- [15:05]
C
It's like, stop the scroll at Alverson.
- [15:08]
B
And she read it, and a few weeks later, her assistant emailed and said, martha is really interested. And so when she got out of Alderson, I went up and she said, I'm going to fund this. And so she funded it. We built a center, and then they decided they wanted to create a new vertical at Martha Stewart devoted to healthy living. And so they brought me on to hit that.
- [15:28]
A
Wow, that's an awesome story. What. What would you say were some things that you learned from her? Because she's obviously a master of branding. I think y' all created a really cool brand. Like, what were some lessons?
- [15:40]
C
And he can carve a shiv like nobody's business.
- [15:44]
B
I can make a salad out of anything. You know, Martha is the most intellectually curious person I have ever been in a room with, even to this day. I remember taking business trips with her and sitting next to her on the plane, and she would be studying seed catalogs. And by the time we landed, she would have memorized seed. Every Latin name of every heirloom seed that was in that catalog. It's amazingly curious. And not just about things that you associate with her, but science, technology. She's just an incredibly curious person. And I think throughout my life, that is what I have taken the most from her, is just be curious about everything and everybody.
- [16:28]
C
And she's also a great symbol of. You know, people throw the word authenticity around all the time. She truly knows everything she teaches. And if you ask her what she is, she'll say, a teacher. Not a celebrity or cook or something. She's a teacher. And that's true authenticity. And in today's day and age of influencing and people starting skincare lines, celebrities doing this, people have just come to accept that you don't need to know anything to do something, to create something. And she's such a great example of you really can only be successful if you honestly learn and know what you're Doing inside and out. Yeah.
- [17:06]
A
Okay. So one thing that I think is really cool about Charles business, two things actually is number one, the retail penetration. So you are widely distributed in Ulta. I want to kind of get into like how that started and then some of the different tactics you've used once you've gotten in store to really become one of their top brands. Because I'm pretty sure milkshake face is the top facial toner. Correct. I've said that about 3, 300 times to picture period. Yeah. But yeah, talk to us about like how you got into Ulta, where the opportunity came. Did you seek it out? Because a lot of listeners to the podcast are probably trying to get their brand into retail.
- [17:40]
B
Yeah.
- [17:41]
A
Understand how to position it. So, you know, retailer want to carry them.
- [17:44]
B
Yep. Well, you know, we have taken everything step by step and we try to be very strategic in every step about how we're going to get in front of the right audience and find the best in class retailer. And I'll go all the way back to the very beginnings. You know, we originally thought we were going to sell our soap online. So Josh learned how to code a website. This was back in 2008. So nobody was making a fortune selling stuff E Commerce back in 2008.
- [18:11]
C
So Jeff Bezos was doing all right.
- [18:14]
B
He was doing okay. I don't think he was profitable yet. And so pretty quickly we said, okay, we can't just rely on what we're going to sell on our website. So I said, where can we position this product where it is unique in the marketplace? And of course you would think at that time we only had the original vars, just so you would think, okay, this is going to go into maybe a spa, farmer's market, that type of environment. And I said, okay, let's go where it's not. And so I loaded up a big bag of the soaps and I did cold calls on all of the department stores on Fifth Avenue. I would eat the sacks. I went to Bloomingdale's, I went to Barney's, I went to Bergdorf. Some of them met with me, some of them didn't even open the door. And the one that gave me my shot was Henry Bendel, which was this beautiful department store on fifth Avenue, sadly no longer there. And the beauty buyer there said, if you will come during the holiday season, this was in the autumn, so the holidays are getting ready to start. And she said, I will give you a three by three table on the floor of Henry Bendel and you can set up there every day and tell your story and we'll see if you get traction. And if so, we'll decide if we're going to bring you into the store. And so that's what I did. And I went down there and it was so valuable, primarily because, you know, I was a physician and more academic, not really an extrovert. I was definitely not a salesperson. And I just watched what the other expert salespeople in the beauty section of Henry Bendel were doing, and I learned so.
- [19:53]
A
And what was that like? What were those things that really.
- [19:56]
C
Oh, by putting in the.
- [19:57]
B
Yeah, the most important thing I learned. And they were, I must say, and some. Every once in a while I'll. I'll run across one of those original salespeople, Henry Bendel, and we reminisce. I think I probably look like a fish out of water, like scared to death in there. But then they really showed me under the wing. But the most important thing that I learned was if you can get the product into the customer's hand, they are like 75% more likely to buy the product, really, because they don't want to give it back or put it back on the table.
- [20:28]
A
So you're talking about. Not necessarily like they are taking a sample, but you're like, no, try it.
- [20:33]
B
Correct.
- [20:33]
C
You just so literally just have to get them to be holding it.
- [20:36]
B
And so my gimmick. My gimmick and Henry Bendel was we, at that time, we had. Our original bar soap was unscented, and then we had created a different bar of soap scented from eat for each month of the year on the farm. And there's a different blend of essential oils for each of the. To capture the essence of that month. And so when people would walk by and, you know, Henry Middle was a very. Henry Pindell was a very crowded store. So you're really fighting for people's attention. When people would walk by, I would say, oh, what's, you know, what year? What month were you born in? And so they would stop and say, oh, I was born in May. And I'll say, oh, May is the scent of sweet peas on the farm. You gotta smell it. And I would put it in their hand and they would smell it. And then I had them. And then not only would they buy that for themselves, it's like, my mom's birthday is in August. What does August smell like? I'm like, gotta smell it. And so usually I would add four or five sets of the soap into each basket as people are going through the store. But I think that's the most valuable thing and is get, get it into your hands. And that's if you're working in the.
- [21:36]
A
Brick and mortar, mortar situation, even with your content messaging. Right. I mean, yeah, you know, connecting emotion to a lot of these things that people are going to associate with your product, you know. Absolutely. Flavor, you know, you want to recall some nostalgia more.
- [21:51]
B
Absolutely. Then feel something personal. Absolutely. And then early on when we, even before we got on TV retail, we had our shop in Sharon Springs, which is still there on Main street in Sharon Springs. And at the time we, we would have the shop in the front and we would package all of our orders in the back room. And it, it got to be the last shipping day one year. And we said, wow, we're backed up on orders. We're going to have to package orders 24 hours straight to get all the orders out. And so Josh came up with the idea of just setting up our computer to film wrapping the orders. And we said, okay, you guys have to keep. This is on Facebook. We said, you guys have to just keep us away because we have to get all this work done.
- [22:36]
C
No, it was actually YouTube. It was right when YouTube started live streaming and you could do 24 hours. We were wrapping in the warehouse. And then every once in a while we'd hold a package. We'd be like, you know, troy Torresen, your package is ready. It's going out now. So people were watching. And then during the course of that 24 hours, the last day of shipping, our neighbors in Sharon Spring would come by with cookies or, you know, like just come by to see how Pete, the shipping manager was doing. And they'd see, stand and chat and we'd talk about Christmas stories. And then it became this 24 hour marathon because we realized that people were watching it for hours and hours and hours. So every year on the last day of shipping for the first decade of our company, we had this 24 hour marathon. It was literally TikTok live shopping 15 years ago, but it was getting people involved in the story. And by the end, you know, it was not only our neighbors bringing us cookies and the high school band coming in and choir singing, you know, Christmas carols, we had Vanessa Williams call in to sing. Martha, Martha, Colin. So it literally became like a Christmas show. Every year.
- [23:44]
B
We literally put on a show. And by the. I would say we did it for six or seven years in a row. And by year six and year seven, we. Not only was it the last shipping day and we had to get those orders out. But we would sometimes do an additional $200,000 in orders during that 24 hour.
- [24:01]
C
Period, which was not smart to do on the last day of shipping.
- [24:04]
B
No, we were prepared. We had prepared for it because we were entertaining people and we were in their home and you know, and you.
- [24:11]
C
Became a part of their Christmas tradition.
- [24:12]
B
They were baking their cookies during the marathon or they're like, this year I'm going to wrap all my presents while watching the marathon. And I think on average people would watch about six hours of YouTube live streaming, which kind of unprecedented if you think about it back then. And we took the knowledge that we learned from that when we launched on tv. Yeah, you know, how to keep the customer engaged and to educate them in that format. So that really helped on tv. And when we decided to go to Ulta, we had really invested a lot in research and at that time people just started talking about the skin microbiome. And we had started looking a year or two ahead of that about how the oligosaccharides in milk could be used as a prebiotic for the microbiome of the skin. And so we had invested in this research and had developed four new SKUs that we took to. Well, we took them Ulta and Sephora and we're like, we don't know which one we're going to go to. And ultimately we put it on Instagram and said. We, we didn't say anything else, we just said we did a post on Instagram and it said Ulta or Sephora and we didn't give any other caption. And I would say that post got about 5,000 comments. People weighing in on, you know, first they were like, are you going to go to one of those? You know, those are big news to the neighbors. We call our customers neighbors and then we could tally up where do we have the most natural customers.
- [25:47]
C
But what was really interesting was that the buyers from Ulta and Sephora were.
- [25:52]
B
Watching that post and that made them even more competitive for our business.
- [25:56]
C
Yeah. So it really helped with negotiations.
- [25:58]
B
So we decided on Ulta.
- [26:01]
C
So your question, you know, you're asking like a lot of people are wondering, you know, how do you get in this big retailers? It's not necessarily hard to get in the retailers, you know, it's hard. Well, it's difficult, but it's not impossible. The real difficulty is once you get a yes to make sure the program you're going in with is right, a lot of times retailers will, will want to take you on, on a sample trial basis, 99% of sample trial bases fail because they're not giving you the resources or you don't have the resources to put behind them to succeed. So knowing that getting in isn't the win that you think it is is key. Then once you're in really factoring the resources you need to succeed. And this is where we failed big one time. Early on we were asked to do a capsule collection in Target for food line and they gave us a year to create an entire food line. They were giving us 4ft of shelf space, a whole end cap. So we had to develop that's millions and millions of dollars of inventory and SKUs. And we thought by the end of the year we had it, we had it ready, we were rolling it out. And what we didn't realize was the amount of resources that need to go into promotions, into marketing, into managing into hiring agencies that come in and clean up the shelves in Target, like third party agency. So we had no money left by the time we launched. So it was just sitting there on the shelf.
- [27:36]
A
You hear that a lot in retail that one of the most common reasons brands go bankrupt is because the resource has to dedicate to sell out to Target, to spend in shop or marketing, to activate on the end cap. All that stuff just drains, you know, your budget.
- [27:51]
C
I mean, we have, we have a field team of about 250 people now that go into Ultas around the country to, to sell the product. I think people go into Ulta and you think, well, you know, the people that work in Ulta work for Ulta. They work for the brands. So they're there, you know, selling the. So it isn't getting in, it's making sure you succeed once you're in.
- [28:12]
A
And you guys have now been there five years.
- [28:14]
C
Yes, five years. Okay, so here's a, here's a story too about how getting in isn't necessarily the win. When we landed the Ulta account when, when they took us on, we were so excited. We put everything we had into the inventory and we launched in brick and mortar stores in March 2020.
- [28:36]
A
Nice.
- [28:36]
C
Everybody remembers that.
- [28:37]
B
That's exactly when all retail shut down. Right.
- [28:40]
C
So we launched in brick and mortar when they locked the doors. So the challenge at that point we had, we had planned out an entire tour across the country. Brent and I and our lead team were going to go to, you know, every Ulta 400 Ultas we were launching in and educate the workers, you know, there on the new brand. Here's what we're about. We're about kindness. Here's the benefits of goat milk, because that's a traditional way when you launch an Alta, you do that. We couldn't go. They were closed. So what we did was, and this was Brent's idea, we researched and found a bakery, a Mom and pop bakery in every one of those 400 markets. And we called them, and we ordered cookies from that mom and Pop bakery and had them sent to the Ulta stores with a note that said, you're getting our milk. Here are some cookies. And then explaining about how we're all about kindness. And that did two things. It educated them on our product. They took the time to read it, but it also showed them that we were a company that cared enough about local business and kindness that we would work with their local business in their community to keep that mom and pop bakery afloat, too. So that was just that quick pivot creativity moment of, what do you, you know, how do you succeed when there's no path to success?
- [30:03]
B
And we also, when the stores did ultimately reopen again, we had invested all this money into Ulta. So we were very tight on cash at the time. We couldn't. We certainly didn't have, you know, 100 field team people out in the field. And so we turned to our customer base and we said, hey, here's the list of all the Ultas that we have currently launched in. Can you go in, tell them you're a Beekman neighbor, that's what we call our customers, and explain to them why Beekman is so important in your life.
- [30:34]
C
And they did so much so that.
- [30:37]
B
Ulta called us and said, you cannot have unscheduled field team come into the store. They thought that these were paid people coming to the store because they knew so much about the brand and talked about it with so much authority that they thought that this was our paid field team. That's the power of connecting with your community. And we see that even today. Like, if you look at our.
- [30:58]
A
The Kindness Crew.
- [30:59]
B
The Kindness Crew, you know, so we have what's called the Kindness Crew. It's about 3,000 people strong now. They are our affiliates on TikTok and Instagram. And if you look at the data, they post, on average, about three, naturally, about three times more than other top brands. And so if you're looking at even, like our biggest competitors, like Kiehl's or Glow recipe or, you know, some of the biggest ones, survey our influencers, post more about our brand for free than almost any other brand's influencers, because there's this ethos of we're all in this together, we're not selling product, we're selling kindness or we're providing kindness. And just people really love that. And I think even to this day, and our CEO will always hates to hear us say this. Probably at this point, we don't even consider ourselves a skin care company. We consider ourselves a kindness company. Skin care is part of that kindness. And the kindness crew really does help us tell that message.
- [32:04]
A
So what do you think? Was there a moment that or a message that really you think broke through to a lot of folks? Like what, what led to building such a strong community, in your opinion?
- [32:16]
B
Well, for sure, authenticity. And I know a lot of people throw around the word authenticity these days.
- [32:23]
A
I guess around what time?
- [32:25]
B
From the beginning. Yeah, because, you know, unlike what has happened in particularly the beauty industry, but most industries in the past decade, people launch a company already with the exit in mind. And that creates all kinds of perversions in how you build your business. When we started Beekman, we were just trying to survive. Like we were trying to pay the mortgage on the farm, try to make it to the next day.
- [32:51]
C
And we let the neighbors know that.
- [32:53]
B
They were with us from the beginning of the journey.
- [32:55]
C
We would post pictures of our, of our bank account when we went to the ATM. They're like $2 and 50 cents in.
- [33:01]
B
The time, the time when I went to the doctor and didn't have enough of my copay. Like we posted that. Yeah, and what, and, and let me tell you, this was like seven years into the business.
- [33:11]
A
So this is, you know, founder led content in like 2015.
- [33:15]
C
Yes, right, absolutely.
- [33:16]
A
That's all the rage now. But you guys were just.
- [33:19]
C
And, and we shared. And it also protected us in growth because a lot of what a lot of small companies are up against is as they grow, your customer thinks that you're selling out or you're, you know, you're, you don't care about them anymore. What we did was every time we launched somewhere new, we would have the neighbors be part of that. Ask them, do you want to go to Ulta? Do you want to go to Target? We would tell them we were nervous about launching on hsn. Make sure you call in and help us feel better and feel more confident. So every step of the way, every time we succeeded, they didn't think we were selling out. We went from working with artisans on Main street in Sharon Springs to the biggest launch ever in QVC's history. They never thought we were selling out because they were succeeding. This was their company succeeding at the same time.
- [34:07]
B
But, but going back to authenticity, I think it, you know, people often say, well, how do you measure authenticity? And authenticity is measured in longevity, you know, because anybody can put on an act and say, oh, this is who I am. And they may can do it for two or three or maybe four years. But we're in it 16 years now. And people can go back to the very day that we started. They can go back to when we're on HSN this weekend. And we are the same people talking about the same thing with the same things that are important to us as they were back then. And so I think we have been rewarded for being authentic and that's why, you know, we have longevity in our business.
- [34:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, totally. And then so authenticity, but also being owned by or at least partially owned by a large private equity firm is probably a nice balance that you're striking these days.
- [34:58]
B
Well, it's interesting. We, when we started the company, we did not want to take any outside funding.
- [35:05]
C
And it was because 2008 was fueled by a debt crisis. Right. So we're like, we are not going to get. We didn't understand the debt crisis. We don't understand it. We are not going, we're not getting financing. And we often say that, like that shark tankification of America is really hurting because there are so many amazing entrepreneurs out there who have great ideas for businesses who don't start them because they think they have to go out and raise $5 million before they start a business. And we always say, if you start your business by raising money, you're not starting a business, you're starting a fundraising company.
- [35:40]
A
Or getting a job.
- [35:41]
C
Exactly. Or getting a job or work. So that idea that you have to have investors to start your business is really throttling American entrepreneurship, we believe.
- [35:52]
B
And Jose, we still did not take investment. We had already invested all the money into Ulta, all the inventory to pay for the end caps and things like that. We self financed all of that. And then when the pandemic hit, we're like, oh crap, we're out of money. And at that point in the pandemic, you had no idea had retail changed forever? You know, is this how it's going to be? And so we were kind of forced into going the route of getting financing. And, you know, luckily we found this partner, Eurasio, and they bought 51% of the company and which gave us a wonderful cash cushion, which I don't think that we have always deployed effectively because you Know, when you bring on a partner that way, of course they're going to have a lot of say in who you hire, what you do, where you spend your money, without all of the knowledge of who you are as a company or who you are as a brand. And so you're taking all of this advice from industry experts, which may or may not always be the best advice. So sometimes we went down roads that, well, maybe we shouldn't have.
- [37:01]
C
And plus, having having resources is often, you know, strangers have a money in your wallet. It really, truly is. And that's what our team hates it. And this is, this is probably what's resonated most in the book to entrepreneurs who read it, is whenever somebody comes to us in the company and says, you know, like, well, I have a budget of $50,000, but if I had $70,000, I could do this, first thing we say is, what if you had a budget of $0? Because that is what we had, you know, when growing from 0 to 58 million, we had $0 to make that happen. Now you're talking about going, you know, from 70 to 72, and you need $5 million of marketing. Think about what you can do with.
- [37:43]
B
$0, and I'll give you a good example of where that works so brilliantly for us. We were launching, this was maybe three years ago, we were launching a new product called Omega Milk. And this was a completely new innovation in facial oil. What we were doing, we were fermenting the omega fatty acids in the goat milk to break them down into smaller particles so they could penetrate the skin. Don't get all nerdy, Brad, okay? And so we had spent so much money into the research, the R and D of this product, we didn't really have a huge marketing budget for it. And we're like, how can we do something disruptive? And this was the time period, this was even before really TikTok had taken off, where it was kind of Instagram was still the big driver in the beauty industry. And we're like. And all these people were doing these pop up experiences and whatnot. And we said, how can we do a disruptive pop up experience with no money? And so we just started thinking, okay, oil, new, new oil. What can we do with new oil? And so I said, you know what? Why don't we think of some very unusual collaboration? And I thought, okay, Jiffy Lube. And Jiffy Lube is interesting because they're the biggest, you know, oil change, rapid oil change company.
- [38:57]
C
So we were trying to get people to change Their facial oil. Here's a company that's getting people to try to change their oil.
- [39:02]
B
And. And women are very hesitant to go in and do it because this is the thing.
- [39:05]
C
Jiffy Lube had put forth a major initiative to try to get more women to come bring their cars in because. And so we learned that. So we approached Jiffy Lube and with the idea of opening a spa, a day spa in select Jiffy Lubes where you could come get your oil changed and then get a facial facial with our new facial oil. Get your facial oil changed. And the brilliant part about that was Jiffy Lube loved it so much, they paid for the entire activation.
- [39:35]
B
$0.00.
- [39:36]
A
$0.00 marketing.
- [39:37]
B
That's right.
- [39:37]
A
That's awesome. That's really good. Incredible. And all that kind of led to this opportunity to create a book. So maybe talk a little bit about the background of the book, how you came to partner with HBR Press. I mean, it's obviously very prestigious name. Super cool.
- [39:54]
B
Correct? Well, we always try to choose like the. The gold star partner. And our agent is here.
- [40:00]
C
Jimmy.
- [40:00]
B
Yeah. Tom Miller, our agent is here. And Tom will verify. When we started talking about this book, I said HBR Press is my number one choice. Right, Tom? I said it from the very beginning. And you know, the idea of the book and it's called Goat wisdom, greatest of all time wisdom. And it kind of goes back to what Josh was saying about the. What we've seen over the past decade with the Shark tankification of entrepreneurship. This thought of the exit from the very beginning, it's just, it's the wrong way to build a legacy company. It can be a perfectly good business. Like, you can grow a business, make a lot of money, get out of the business. But if you want to build a true legacy type company, maybe something that's going to give back to your community in a big way or for multiple generations in your family, you have to lay the foundations for a legacy business.
- [40:57]
C
And part of the problem that we saw with all the entrepreneurial advice that was being published in media and podcasts and things were, it just, it was all sort of like this Elon Musk sort of, you know, like, fail fast, break, fail fast, break things, risk everything, quit your job, go, you know, double down on how to hack your way to success. Yeah, hack your way to success. Three, you know, secrets that you're not doing.
- [41:22]
B
You know, all those things that are very successful on TikTok.
- [41:24]
A
Right?
- [41:24]
C
Yes. And, well, as Brent said, that is a way to roll the dice and gamble and maybe you'll be Elon Musk. But we did it the old fashioned way. We all have these sayings that we hear our grandmother say, our father say, and we ignore them. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. Empty vessel makes the most noise. All of these old sayings tried and truisms that have been around for centuries, which we applied in growing our business. And we said if we can just put that sort of greatest of all time wisdom in one place, maybe we can encourage people who are afraid of gambling at all, risking at all, and so they're not starting their business. And one of the sayings we have is, if you want to shoot for the moon, there's two ways to get there. You can build a rocket or build a ladder. And most entrepreneurial advice was focused on building that rocket. Most rockets explode, and one might make it, but most of them explode if you build a ladder. We saw ourselves as a ladder building. You're probably not going to make it to the moon, but you're going to wind up higher off the ground than where you started. We really wanted to write a book that was for the ladder entrepreneurs.
- [42:38]
B
It's so readable because it's got all these wonderful stories that we've been telling during this hour. I think today we are really plagued with too much information. You know, everywhere you turn, someone is telling you something. You're reading on TikTok, reading on Instagram, you're reading on LinkedIn. We are plagued with too much information, but a severe lack of wisdom. And what we hope that people get by the time they finish the book is how they will. Yes, you're going to be bombarded with information throughout the day, but how do you decipher what are those nuggets of information that you have been. Have been put in front of you? And how do you immediately convert them into wisdom to solve a problem that you're dealing with that day? And if we can get more people to think about wisdom, then we will have done a really great thing for entrepreneurship.
- [43:31]
A
Wow, that's. That's very well said. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Yeah, everybody, that's it. Both Josh and Brent are around to signed books. We've got a bunch of copies back there, so if you want to get a signed copy, talk to these guys. We got the space for another 30 minutes. It is an open bar. The empanadas are fire.
- [43:56]
B
So please, can I just do one plug?
- [43:58]
A
Of course.
- [44:00]
B
Because through the great generosity of Harvard Business Review, all of the proceeds from the sales of the book go to Housing Works, which is hosting the event tonight. So if you have someone in your life who wants to start a business or dreams of being an entrepreneur, it's a great Christmas gift, and you're giving back to a wonderful cause. Housing Works.
- [44:18]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much. Thank you.