Jack Black Skin Care: Curran and Jeff Dandurand

27:16But can I just ask kind of where your head was at the time? Because, I mean, you'd read the surveys and research that Kern and Emily had done and you thought that was encouraging. But still, like you did not – now you didn't have a steady income. And Kern was going to put in all of your money into this business, which was a huge risk. I mean were you worried about that?

27:41Yeah. I mean I would – Because you guys were like four – Four years old. Four, yeah. I mean that's – Well, I thought the numbers, the business plan they put together was very achievable. And I thought, gosh, we're going to be killing it in five years. because the numbers supported a hugely successful company. The projections. Yeah, projections. But the projections are numbers. Yeah. Projections are projections. Yeah. And we didn't make our projections. We didn't even come close to that. But the reality was that I just didn't think about us not being successful. And it was sort of like this incredible stroke of luck that you lost your job at this time.

28:22I mean, of course, at the time, I probably didn't feel that way. But Emily and Curran had expertise in marketing and in product, but not in sales. You were a sales guy. They needed a salesperson. Yeah. And I talked to Emily and Curran about helping them with sales and developing a database for us to contact golf country club buyers all over the country. And these were for golf shops. You thought golf shops on golf courses. Yeah. This is smart because that's a tribe and Jeff is a golfer, right, Jeff? Right. You're a good golfer. That's right. Okay. And so, I mean, we really thought that this golf club strategy of distribution would be a very strong one.

29:05Yeah. When we first started the company, we were more thinking we're going to focus on sunscreens. Yeah. But then we're also going to add on things like shave cream and hand cream, lip balm. because we're thinking, well, the men, they're playing golf every weekend. They're not going to the mall. So let's reach them where they're going. We're trying to be innovative in our distribution. And Kern, was Emily at all nervous? Like, ooh, your husband coming in? Like, was there any of that weirdness? Yeah, yeah. She had some advisors, some lawyers that were like, you don't want to get involved with a married couple.

29:42Like, what if that goes off the rails? And also, you know, with Jeff and I combined, if we voted against her, you know, we could go, hey, we just want this whole thing for ourselves. We're, you know, kicking you out. Yeah. But she trusted us and believed in the concept and she moved forward. But we did have to talk through that. And tell me about the name. How did you, how did you, because you didn't initially didn't have a name. You just had a concept. Right. Yeah. Tell me more about that. Well, I actually came up with the name. I was on a flight, I had a yellow legal pad, and I just wrote down Jack Black.

30:19I liked the strength of that name, the simplicity of it, the timelessness. It felt very masculine, and it could have authority over a lot of different product categories. It wasn't so narrow, like the art of shaving, or you're just body, or you're just sunscreen. And you wanted the name of a person because? Because I wanted the guys to relate to it. Like it's their buddy. And they're not embarrassed at all to say, I use Jack Black. Yeah. Versus I use something that I can't pronounce or it's a French name or it's a girl's name. And Jack Black could be the person who started the company like Vidal Sassone or, you know, like it's Jack Black.

31:06It's my company. Just a very strong, rugged, masculine, athletic guy. You wanted, like, maybe this is the best analogy, but you kind of wanted the Marlboro man. Yeah, exactly. But not a smoker. You said not smoking. Yeah, yeah. Not smoking. And the big potential was getting the vast numbers of heterosexual guys that cared about how they looked, that worked out, spent money on their clothes, tried to eat right, get them to use skincare. Right. Because it totally makes sense. All right. So you have this name, Jack Black. And by the way, just coincidentally, I mean, this was kind of before the actor Jack Black really blew up.

31:50I think High Fidelity, I can't remember when that came out. That was his first big role. Like, yeah, we had already trademarked the name and locked into that and designed the packaging when he had his first movie. And God bless him, but he is not like the Marlboro man. He's amazing. I love him. If he was here right now, I'd have a beer with him or a coffee. But he's not – I don't think of like rugged Americana when I think of the actor Jack Black. No, we would not have ever picked him to be our mascot. He's Kung Fu Panda. He is Kung Fu Panda. Yeah. Yeah, so there was confusion in the early days, and people were thinking he owned the company.

32:31And we'd get emails to our info at GetJackBlack, hey, Jack, I love your latest movie, and I love your line. All right, so you've got this name and this brand. Now let's talk about the colors and the label. What did you do for that? Well, this was Emily's strength, too. She was so good at design and everything was just meticulously crafted. The label and the overall design was more inspired by cigar labels and liquor, upscale craft liquor. It's a diamond shaped sticker. It looks like a sticker, but was it diamond shaped logo on top of a solid colored and the color was blue. Right. It was a royal blue.

33:19And at the time, the men's lines were white, gray, and brown. The competing lines you're talking about, competitors. Yeah, were white, gray, and brown. Okay. And we knew we had to have massive eye appeal to get men to notice it. So we liked the strength of the blue and the black together. Yeah. And then after we did the first focus groups, we didn't do any more research because we didn't have any money. So we're just, this is all gut feel and instinct. But we settled on what we ended up going with, and it's what we still market today. Yeah. All right. So you have the logo, you've got the name, and you've got the money to get this out there.

34:02And I'm assuming you didn't build your own facility. You didn't have enough money for that. But there were contract manufacturers that you could presumably go to and pick out the ingredients and say, this is what we want. So did you already have relationships with some of those manufacturers through Mary Kay? We did. And we went to three different contract manufacturers that we had worked with at Mary Kay. So we knew the people and they were willing to work with us. And we, all the formulas were custom. We did test the formulas amongst different guys that we knew in the Dallas area and got really good feedback.

34:36So that was encouraging. And what kind of scents, what kind of smells were you going for? That's a good question because the aromas are so important for guys. And what we had found in the market was either they were super heavily fragranced or they were just not fragranced at all. So we really took the approach of light aromas, not fragrance. There was a lot of eucalyptus and peppermint, very fresh, kind of tingly, spa-like fragrances. And the other thing in the formulations that we focused on were the textures. men really object to heavy, greasy, kind of occlusive feelings. So the products were very sheer and light and didn't weigh heavy on the skin, which was important.

35:21All right. So 2000, you launched the brand. The idea is you're going to be in golf stores. So you have, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars worth of product, right, that you've ordered. And what are you going to do from there? Like, how are you going to start? How are you going to get people to notice? How did you decide to, like, launch this product? Well, we decided to debut at the 2000 PGA show in Orlando, which is a massive show. Like, 30 ,000 people attend. This is, like, presumably one of the biggest golf trade shows. It's in the world. Biggest in the world. Okay. So you're preparing for this show, and, you know, you need to get the word out.

35:58There probably aren't going to be too many personal care products shown there. So what did you do? So Jeff had meticulously compiled a list of, what was it, like 5 ,000? Yeah, it was about 5 ,000 golf country clubs, resort clubs all over the country. And then when I got laid off, I just spent my whole day calling country clubs and making sure that the database that we were putting together had the right address and the right buyer's name, email address, follow-up phone number, and then the mailer, right, Corinne? Yeah. So we designed this mailer that featured our product line, beautiful photography, and we mailed it out to all these 5 ,000 buyers that Jeff had carefully researched.

36:50And we didn't design the mailing panel correctly. And the post office read the return address as the ship to address. So all of them came like within two weeks later, three weeks later, like right before the show, we get them all back to the executive suite. So the mailers never got there. Never got there. So like nobody knew we were there. So that was the first sign it was going to be an interesting show. So you get to Orlando to this PGA trade show. You've got a booth there and you show up and tell me about the show. Well, it's massive. There's just people everywhere. We had terrible location for our booth.

37:34We're in the very last row at the very end of that row in the back corner, not even by a bathroom or anything. We had no traffic coming by. So we would kind of walk the aisles and grab people and bring them back and put the product on their hands. And what did your display look like? I mean, did you have all the products in, you know, all labeled and everything? Well, we didn't have production yet. So we had lab samples, which were basically white tubes that were hand crimped by the lab. Okay. And then we had this seven foot tall, very beautiful wood floor standing fixture, laser cut logo. We spent a ton of money on it.

38:16And our idea was this is the display you're going to use in your golf shop and it'll hold$4 ,000 worth of Jack Black product and doesn't it look beautiful? And you were going to provide that to whoever? If you ordered$4 ,000, you could get the free display. The wood display, okay. So first of all, when we finally got a few people back there, we would take the tubes and get ready to let them feel the product and the crimps would bust and shoot out the other end all over their shirts. So the crimps were busting everywhere. where people would look at that display and just like go on, what are you thinking?

38:53We don't need, we can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much sunscreen product or shave cream. They just weren't interested. They were there to look at the latest equipment, the latest golf balls, range finders. Pats, clothing. Yeah, they just, the category, they're just like, I don't care. Yeah. I don't get it. And so finally Jeff rounded up seven of his good friends in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that were head pros at the various country clubs and brought them over. And we got a sale, probably a pity purchase from each of them. So it was a big, big fail. So, all right. So this, I mean, you had put your entire strategy was this tribe of people or golfers and golf courses.

39:49And did you ask yourself, what did I get wrong? What happened here? Yeah, I think we were starting to go, hmm, you know, we might need to expand and go to traditional retail. But we, after we left, I will say Jeff took that floor standing seven foot wooden display. He cracked it into a million pieces and put it in the dumpster. He was so mad. and then we went to the orlando airport we went to chile's to have dinner before our flight and jeff's like this isn't working we got to pull the plug and we got to go get real jobs wow jeff you're the guy who's like was persistent in pursuing current never taking no for an answer you're the guy and she was like no i'm not gonna marry you i'm gonna date you and you're like no Come on.

40:42You're the one who says, let's pack this in? I was so discouraged by the lack of sales at that show. And Kern looked at me and said, no, when we get back to Dallas, you got to get on the phone and start making some calls to open up accounts. We have$450 ,000 worth of inventory coming in in March and April, and we need to start selling that. So I thought, okay, I've got a really strong database here. We did meet some people that seemed interested and found a couple independent reps and I started talking to those reps about carrying Jack Black. And then I just got on the phone and cold called all day, literally all day.

41:27So you needed a different approach. Mm-hmm. You were not going to build a scalable brand through golf shops. Yeah, we didn't abandon golf, and Jeff continued to build golf, and we opened some really amazing accounts, which a few months later led to a great PR mention. So we opened, was it Austin Country Club, Jeff? Yeah, Austin Country Club. Austin Country Club. The pro told Jeff that Matthew McConaughey was using our products and loved them. He was buying it at the shop there? Yes. In the golf pro show. He lived in Austin. So the golf pro there says, Matthew McConaughey likes your stuff, but you didn't know that for sure.

42:12We just heard it through the pro. Okay. So this was at the height of InStyle, the InStyle magazine, and there was all the celebrity features about what the celebs are using. So Emily was based in New York, and she was really hitting the streets, you know, talking to the editors, trying to get some ink on Jack Black. And she landed a meeting with InStyle, and she shared the Matthew McConaughey tidbit, and they published it in September. Just a photo of him and then saying, hey, he likes Jack Black products. Right. And then they had a picture of the beard lube and the lip balm. Wow. And so that led to specialty stores calling us.

42:53We actually got inbound calls from people interested in taking our line, which was a first. Here's my question about that. She could have been totally lying. Like she could have said, hey, Matthew McConaughey or Jack Nicholson. And they were just like, yeah, great. We'll run a story. Like I'm amazed about that. I mean because – and Matthew McConaughey probably doesn't read in style. But like he could have been flipping through it at the grocery store if he goes and had been like, my, Jack Black. First of all, what is Jack Black? Or he might have been like, how do they even know this? Like – Right.

43:25Right? They just ran with it. Well, that was back in the day. back in 2000. That doesn't happen anymore. It doesn't happen anymore. You get sued. Yeah. Yeah. So the magazines, you know, they carefully do their diligence and all that. But back then it was very, very common. All right. So you have Matthew McConaughey, maybe, maybe not using the product, but it doesn't matter. You're getting attention and you, but you also knew through the disaster at Orlando that you had to probably start to look at retail shops. And so I guess the first big store was a Dallas department store, Stanley Korshak, is that what it's called?

44:06Yeah. So tell me about that approach. How did you get in there? Well, they just have one location, but it's super special store, very upscale, great selection of merchandise. And the buyer granted me a meeting and I presented the line. At that point, it was still in lab samples because we didn't have production. He took everything home and he tried it and he called back very quickly and he's like, I love your formulas. We'll take it. And we're like, oh my gosh, like that's great. And they immediately did well with it. They had good sell through and were reordering. And so we started really to focus on more traditional retailers, but to not abandon golf either though.

44:49And once you got into the stores, right, still the problem that you have was not – was far from being solved, which is the behavioral change. Because, you know, it reminds me, we did a story on the show about Guayaki Yerba Mate, right? And it's a big company now. But like when they first started trying to get people to drink it, they're like, this tastes awful. It's bitter. What is this? And it took them like 20 years to, you know, to kind of introduce it to people. It's still growing. But you're in Stanley Korshak. And then what? Like don't you have to like show people how to use it and get men to start using it?

45:28Well, they had really great salespeople that did a lot of consultation and personal service. Yeah. But what we – when our eyes were really opened was when we opened Nordstrom. We pitched the guy in Dallas. His name was Mark Lance. He said he liked the formulas, but he wasn't sure it would work. You know, because retailers are very protective of their valuable real estate on the floor and they got to make sure you're going to sell. Yeah. And so men's skin care was absolutely not proven and it was very risky for them. Finally, he's like, OK, we'll bring you into Stonebriar. We'll test it. Stonebriar is a is a where is that?

46:09It's in Frisco. OK, that's where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters are. It's like a booming town. So they invited us to come to the grand opening of the store. It was the last minute invite. We could not get a babysitter. And so me, Jeff, and our two little kids went to the opening. And I kind of manned our product. And Jeff followed the kids, chased the kids around the mall. So I didn't sell anything. But I did see this woman making sale after sale. Her name was Elaine Syke. And she's the best salesperson I've ever laid eyes on. Wow. And at the end of the night, I went up to her and I introduced myself and we started talking.

46:56And I'm like, well, we just started this line. And would you be willing to work a few hours for us? And she agreed to give us five hours a week. And she sold like crazy. She would pull guys over, start to talk to them, put the product on their skin, let them feel it, let them smell it, and they would buy. So here's this model of how you educate guys. And they would come back and reorder. What would she sell them? Shaving cream or? Well, our strategy was guys understand shave product. You hook them with just a superior shave cream. And that was our hero product. It was called Beard Lube. It was very unique.

47:42It was translucent. It had a lot of natural oils in it, had some skincare ingredients in it. So it was a great shave and it left your skin feeling really soft and silky. That was the gateway, the shaving cream. Yes. Okay. You would talk about the Beard Lube. They would say buy it. You'd give them a sample of the face buff, which is your cleanser and your scrub. Use this in the shower before you shave. it exfoliates gets you a closer shave and then you give them a sample of the post-shave cooling gel after you're done shaving put this on to cool the skin and gently hydrate and so i saw at that moment the power of what a great salesperson can do at the store level what we had to invest in yeah you had to pull the guy in because he's not just walking up going i'm looking for grooming products.

48:34He's walking by and you're literally chatting him up and pulling him from what he's doing and bringing him over to your area. Yeah. And that's what we had to do. It was very time consuming and labor intensive, but you had to do that. That's how you get the behavior change, educating these guys one by one. When we come back after the break, how Jack Black shows up at Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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50:29Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2002, two years after launching Jack Black, and Curran, Jeff, and Emily are shifting their initial strategy from selling to men in golf shops to selling to men in department stores. And they're starting to get some traction, hitting$2 million in annual sales. By the way, were your projections right? Is that what you had anticipated for 2002? Oh, from the original? No, we were way under. No. Way, way under. I mean, that business plan was bogus and off target from day one. We may have had at the end of year two$8 million in sales in our projections.

51:11It wasn't even close. And that's because you overestimated initially how big the market was going to be at that point? Yeah, and how much golf shops would sell. So let me ask about your relationship during this time because it's – yes, you're growing and it looks good. But still, you're not – I mean bringing$2 million in a year, you guys were not making – you're not profitable. And I have to assume you guys had almost no salary at that point because you had to spend money on product. What was your relationship like? I mean was it stressful being married, raising kids and running the business? Like did you guys fight?

51:52Yes, it was very, very stressful. And there was a lot of tension, a lot of pressure. We didn't pay ourselves for maybe four years, pay ourselves at all. And, you know, you're just, you're struggling to survive. And your family's all in on it, right? Yeah. So we got through it, but you've got to know what you're getting into. I advise other couples that are thinking about starting a business. It's going to really strain your marriage because you could disagree at work and have a heated discussion. If it's not your husband, you come home and you don't have to see that person that you just had that big fight with.

52:34But when you're working with them, there they are. And you're still fighting when you get home from work and then you're fighting when you're back on the job and there's no escape. Jeff, did you – I mean it sounds like you really – Kern was the CEO. that you deferred to her leadership? Or did you sometimes, I don't know, metal is maybe not the right word, did you sometimes question her leadership? No, I never really questioned her leadership or Emily's. I mean, they were just, in my opinion, extremely talented. And I mean, I will say that my annual physical, my doctor who I'd known for many years asked me how things were going.

53:15I said, you know what, it's pretty tough. I said, things at home are rough because, you know, we're working together. We're trying to build this business. And he said, have you ever thought about, you know, going to therapy? And I said, yeah, you know, I have. And he gave me the name of a therapist. And I, Kern and I went to, you know, for an hour visit. And, you know, I thought it was pretty helpful. And she said, you know, your wife is really, really smart. and you need to stop arguing about the little things and save your ammunition for something that really matters. And I stopped that day, the next day.

53:59I just said, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to keep arguing about this little stuff. And then a couple years later when we started, you know, really doing better and started paying ourselves more, I mean, that helped a lot. Those two things helped a lot. I think you guys started to break even or maybe even turn a slight profit in your maybe third or fourth year. Your sales were about$5 million that year. Did that ease the pressure a little bit? Yeah, I think you could breathe a little easier, but I was still super conservative fiscally. Like, we still didn't have a lot of money to spend. And so I was very tight-fisted about what we spent our money on.

54:44And we had a saying that we're fabulously frugal, try to make it positive. You know, we had really crappy offices, no trappings, and flow coach stayed in budget hotels. And we would not spend money unless we knew it was going to drive sales because we were not out of the woods yet. Yeah. Well, and we were operating with a line of credit at that point that was expanding. I think initially it was$250 ,000, then it was$500 ,000, then it became a million dollars. And that was within five, six years of starting the business. And of course, there weren't any bankers that were going to give you that money without a personal guarantee.

55:29So we'd have to take our stock portfolio and personally guarantee that to have the line of credit. Yeah. What about – I mean, of course, you're still small. Even as you grew, you know, you're growing every year, which was impressive. I mean, by, you know, I think 2011, you hit$35 million in sales, so 11 years in. But still small compared to the overall cosmetics industry. Did that, in a sense, shield you from potential threats and competitors or did you already start to see the shark circling saying, wait a minute, maybe they're on to something? Oh, yeah, it was just hyper competitive. Oh, my gosh.

56:10You had everybody from the big companies to the little startups to everybody in between. Because in the industry, everybody's, you know, it's pretty quick to copy something that's working well. so there was a lot of competitors and it was even more brutal than the women's because the total size of the market was so much smaller the space you were granted on the floor was smaller but yet there were so many more people wanting to get a piece of it and some of them could be ruthless they'd try to steal your employees steal your customers you know you'd have your space all set up and the next day you'd go into work and it was gone because your competitor or moved it.

56:52So there was just a lot of battles on the store floors. One of the things that you guys did, and I think it goes back to the sort of the golf strategy, was you started to partner with NFL teams. Like you would put your product in locker rooms so players could use them. You partnered with the Dallas Cowboys. I mean, this is, you know, you're in Dallas, America's team, right? And did that move the needle? I mean, being in luxury suites at Cowboy Stadium, or being in the locker rooms at, you know, NFL locker rooms. Did that really, does that really matter? Does that make a difference? Well, it was hard to quantify, but I do feel like it was a game changer for us.

57:31We first got into the NFL program through the Cowboys. The Joneses were building the new stadium and it was going to be the absolute epitome of luxury stadiums. And Jerry Jones used Jack Black and we were invited to meet with them about putting our products in the luxury suites and we would co-brand the products so we change our labeling to include the cowboy star and then we would also in return for providing the products we negotiated advertising in the stadium and on their website and also we would do gifting to vips which is a great way to sample yeah and And, you know, you're creating this relationship with the guy's favorite football team.

58:22And that's a good combination for us. And it's positive aura for our brand. Tony Romo is using Jack Black. It's good enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. Or like the Cowboys like Jack Black. Wow. I'm going to check that out. Yeah. So the Super Bowl, I think it was in 2011, was at the Cowboy Stadium. and all our products were in the suites and all the other NFL team owners and executives, of course, came to the game and they saw our products and we started getting so many phone calls from the other teams. We want to put your products in our suites. We want it to be co-branded, you know, with our Packers logo, with the Bears, whatever.

59:04And we reached so many men that way that we wouldn't have otherwise reached. I mean, the growth really was organic, right? I mean, you just kind of cash flowed, grew. I mean, once you were in Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's and these big, big retailers, was it still a hustle? Did Jeff, did you still have to like call people up and try to open accounts or did it get significantly easier? Well, the cold calling was obviously heavy for the first six or seven years. And then from that point forward, I dealt with our independent sales reps who sold to gift stores, specialty shops, spas, men's clothing stores.

59:48I mean, it was a whole different category that no one else was going after either. We had at one point maybe six or 700 independent retail-type stores that were selling Jack Black, and I dealt with all the reps that were helping us open those types of accounts. When did you feel, Corinne, that you were like, okay, I think we have crossed the threshold. Like now we have done enough work where there's momentum in people understanding what these products are, how to use them. I think it would be around 2011, 12, so 10, 12 years into it. With the NFL teams, we have that great sports program. our brand awareness was growing.

1:00:37We were number one with almost all our retailers. We had 35 % share in the luxury category and we were the dominant leader. Um, but I never felt like I could rest because there was always somebody trying to take you out. Yeah. There's so many competitors. And, um, so even to the point where we sold the company every day, I was still like fighting the good fight. Let me ask you about that because you did, of course, 2018, 18 years in, you were acquired by Edgewell and they're a pretty big personal care company. They paid you a significant amount of money for the brand. And I imagine 18 years in, you guys were exhausted.

1:01:24And so had you been looking for an out at that point? Yes. We actually at that point and started a process with investment bankers to pursue selling the company. Emily had two small, they were in junior high, high school, and she was ready to just spend time with her kids. We'd worked so hard. Jeff was ready. I was getting there. I was the last one to finally say, hey, you know, it's time to retire. For Jeff and I, everything we had was tied up in the company, And so we had little liquidity at that point. So we just felt like it was time and we had grown the business to a good point. And we had a great story to tell.

1:02:10And did you ever think about, I'm sure you were approached by like private equity groups or like, look, we'll buy a chunk of it. You can take money off the table and let's make this even bigger. Right. They would go, you have two bites of the apple. We weren't interested in that option. But we did talk to some private equity groups as part of the process. Prior to the actual hiring of an investment banker, two years prior to that, we were approached by a very significant player in the category. They made us an unsolicited, non-binding offer that was, you know, a very nice offer. And we spent nine months with them, giving them every detail of our business.

1:02:56They knew that they were the only ones bidding for our business. We provided them with details on new products, on how we sold, on the sales on every store that we sold to. And two weeks prior to closing, they came into Dallas. We met at the Four Seasons Hotel. They probably had 40 people. I think we had five or six. And they said, you know that offer we made you nine months ago, non-binding? well our board can't get to that number oh wow i mean they basically the offer that we made were not that number's off the table you know we asked them well what what do you have in mind i mean what you know the number's x what's the new number and they were they just wouldn't give us a number they just said you're not going to be happy with it and we were like well what is it and then i asked them i said well how much do you think you can grow our business by we only think we can grow your business by 15 % to 20%.

1:03:51I said, we can grow our business 15 % to 20 % without you. Wow. And it ended. I mean, it basically just stopped that day. And this is after you'd opened your entire data room to the owner of books. For nine months. And what year was this? 2015, 2016. Wow. So they had new lawyers trade secrets. They had everything. They had our formulas, everything. Oof. Yeah. So we learned a very painful lesson. Yeah. You need to have competition in your process. That must have been quite devastating. It really was. Oh, yeah. And we did not see it coming because they were just whining and dining and sweet talking.

1:04:31And it was non-binding, so they didn't have to pay a penalty or anything. Zero. So we waited a couple of years before we hired a banker to do it the right way. Zero again, yeah. Yeah. You reportedly, Edgewell paid about$100 million for the brand. I don't know if that's accurate or not. That's been reported, but still amazing, an amazing exit for a brand that you started in 2000. I mean, once that happened, I think, Jeff, you left, right? You sort of retired. I stayed for one year. I agreed to stay on for a year to help with the transition. Emily left right away, or she left pretty soon after, right?

1:05:15Yeah, she left and we closed in January and she left in December. And you, Kern, you stayed for a while as an advisor up until like 2021, I think, right? Yeah, I was worried I would be bored because I've always been pretty much a workaholic. But when I did retire, and I kind of weaned myself from work because gradually reducing my hours that I was working after we sold the company. but I never had any girlfriends when I was working because it was just so all-consuming. You had your work and then your kids, so I never had any friends. And now I've got time to have some good girlfriends, which I'm enjoying.

1:05:53So it's been good. I mean, when you guys think about this journey and, you know, everything that led up to it, how much of it do you attribute to your work and how much do you think has to do with getting lucky? I mean, I've heard some luck in there. I mean, I think the fact that you got laid off, Jeff, was a little lucky. I felt that at the time. But what do you think, Jeff, first to you? I believe in luck. I'm a lucky guy. I was lucky to have met Curran. She changed my life. We were lucky to have Emily as our business partner. I think we were lucky to open some of the retailers that we opened.

1:06:33but also you know we worked extremely hard you know it seemed like we were always working it just seemed like for 18 years there that that we didn't have a lot of downtime but we were lucky I think we were very lucky but if we hadn't been resilient and pivoted when we needed to and worked hard then I think we wouldn't have capitalized on the luck so you got to have I guess all of it firing on all cylinders. That's Curran and Jeff Danderant, co-founders of Jack Black. By the way, probably not a huge surprise here, but one of the company's most loyal customers is Jeff. I am not lying. I use probably 14 or 15 Jack Black products every day.

1:07:23Every day. When I take a shower, I use a body wash. I use the shampoo. I use the conditioner. I use the face buff in the shower. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Seifer. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Sam Paulson, Ramel Wood, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez.

1:08:00I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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