Ouidad hair products: Ouidad Wise

27:04And money, we weren't able, we didn't have any money. It was very difficult. We would go to banks. We would pitch the ideas to the banks of over 60 % of people in this country have all over the world have curly hair. This is going to be incredible. It's going to be a huge success. And they were just, they were all men sitting at the bank, rolling their eyes. They just saying, this makes no sense. You might as well burn the money. And after a while, it's just, we were lucky. Reagan was the president and he had just passed the law where he was allowing the SBA, which is the Small Business Administration, to grant little money for immigrant people to be able to open their businesses.

27:46And they gave us$25 ,000. And that's like a million. So it was perfect. We needed a little bit more. So it was asking family, friends, begging, borrowing. We came borderline to stealing. Of course not. But we put the salon together. We couldn't afford to build the salon itself. My friend's family are in construction building, came in and camped out in this space and built up the salon in three days. Wow. And so the idea was, I'll have a salon that caters to women with hair like mine, or anyone really, curly hair, tight curls, wavy hair. And were you going to advertise it that way? Were you thinking, hey, we should maybe call it like curls or curl salon or something like that.

28:36As far as what to call the salon, that was something else that Peter and I had to come in agreement on. Peter thought Widad would be a great name for the salon. I thought he was absolutely crazy. I couldn't imagine my name as a salon. And he kept saying, Widad, it's so different. Nobody understands it. That's what makes it great. It is so unique. And finally convinced me. So we did do an awning up there that did say, WeDod, the curl experts. But that meant nothing to people. When we come back in just a moment, WeDod manages to get the salon up and running and even thriving before she realizes, hang on, there's actually a second business here that could be even bigger.

29:21Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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31:52Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's April 24th, 1984, and Weedad Wise is about to open her brand new salon, which specializes in curly hair. It's in midtown Manhattan, just a few doors down from the Carnegie Deli. And I remember the door opening nine o 'clock in the morning. I was there. Everything is ready to go. And no clients. And the phone wasn't ringing. My heart was in my throat, throbbing. I was so nervous. We were so buried and working diligently as to how to build, how to open it, go through the whole process. Yes, SBA took forever back and forth that we didn't do any marketing whatsoever.

32:38So you opened up to crickets. There's nothing. It was very, very scary. And Peter came up with this great idea. And I said to him, I said, Peter, there's no customers. What are we going to do? I know some of the clients that I had are going to come in, but not enough. And he said, flyers. Flyers. And I said, flyers? What are flyers? And he said, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to hand out flyers for this business. I want to select the people I give flyers to. So Peter got dressed to the nines, but every morning at 6 a.m. he would get up, run into the street around where the salon was, and he would hand out flyers to ladies coming out of the subway that were well-dressed and had curly hair.

33:20And we were lucky that around the corner was Condé Nast, publication who owned a lot of the magazines. So there were a lot of ladies working in that building. And one of the ladies came in, her name was Linda. And I was so excited standing behind the chair. And I did her hair and she just looked in the mirror and just didn't say anything. Her mouth dropped. And I said, there goes our career. There goes all the money. This woman is mortified. And she had tears in her eyes. And she got up. She came to me and she said, I have never, ever seen my hair look like this. I love it. Wow. And then I know, as you know, the real compliments, the real results is when she gets back into her office and her friends and her peers see her and she started getting compliments.

34:15And little by little, we started getting sprinkle of women here and there and here and there. Not till three months later did I realize that she was the person that was managing a lot of the magazines. So she had access to all of them. And everybody saw her hair. The word of mouth went out so fast. It was incredible. It was one woman telling another woman to her family, to her friends. The ladies started coming. Then men started coming with their curly hair because they're sick and tired of shaving it off or greasing it down to manage it. And the business just started. It was incredible. I read that one of the things you did, and it makes sense to me knowing that Peter was a restaurant manager and so he was so focused on hospitality.

35:01One of the things you guys did in your first salon was you adjusted the lighting so that it fell on the client in the chair and not on the hairdresser. In other words, you really wanted to focus on making the client feel like a star. That's exactly what we did. Everything was catered around the customer. Every little detail was thought about how we serve them, how we weren't allowed to speak to each other in front of the clients. We did a lot of eye signals because it was their space. We weren't allowed to pass anything in front of a client. That was their space between the mirror and the actual seat.

35:41And the way it was described as if they were performing on stage and we were the backup. So tell me about how it worked. I mean, Peter was like in a restaurant, except as a salon. He was front of house. He was doing appointments and he was dealing with like store cleanliness. And you were the only hairstylist? At the beginning, I was the only hairstylist. And a friend of mine from one of the salons I worked at joined us. So Peter was the front desk. He would welcome the clients in. He would check the clients out. He was pretty much managing operations. This was a seven-day-a-week job. Even though you were probably closed Sunday and Monday, that was the day for accounting and prepping for the week.

36:23Like, you were working nonstop. It was nonstop. He would leave and go to work in the restaurant and then go home and crash and get up and do the same thing. And I would get up in the morning. I would go to work. I would get home around 9 o 'clock at night. We would eat and we would start our day again. On weekends, which was Sunday and Monday, we would go in and clean the salon thoroughly. And then we would go downtown and shop for the salon. Wow. And at the time, I had formulated my own deep treatment, which became a big hit with the clients. So we used to go down to Canal Street and buy aesthetic jars, like skincare jars, just white, small jars, so we can put our treatment in, sterilize them, put our treatment in so we can sell them.

37:07So it was 24-7. There was no day off, no vacation for almost six years. And he was working at the restaurant because you guys needed the money? Yes. The money that he made was to take care of our life, our home. Tell me about, okay, so you opened the salon and you start to formulate hair treatments, particularly for women with curly hair because you had curly hair. Tell me about what you were making. I mean, like, what were you mixing together? Before the salon opened, I had formulated the deep treatment. And that was part of my reputation when I worked freelance. And it was a shampoo or it was like a...

37:48A deep treatment is an actual conditioner. So if your hair is dried or fried, you want to feed it. And this is a treatment where you put it into your hair and you use a shower cap and you heat it for about 15 minutes on low heat and let it sit there in total 20 minutes and then rinse it out. And that was made of different hair products that were out there that had no waxes, oil, silicones. They were mostly skincare combination of putting in like a detangler, putting in a breathable oil to create the emulsion that I needed to feed the curls. Was it hard to source ingredients at that time? I mean, today you can just get anything from Amazon, but was it hard to find those things?

38:31It was very, very difficult to source it. And when I was in hairdressing school, one of the classes was biology, the courses, the little courses that we took. And I understood a little bit about the chemistry of the hair and what it took to do the hair. So then I had to find a chemist to help me create the ingredients and formulate it where I could put it in and get it approved for packaging and everything else. So it was very, very difficult to find. And there was nothing for curly hair out there because the only thing that were out there that people knew how to manage their hair with was to put oil on it.

39:05And there were a lot of people just putting olive oils. And some people would put petroleum gel to control some of it. And this was not designed to be a product. It was just what you needed to use because what, there was nothing on the market that was good enough or available to treat curly hair? Exactly. Exactly. I didn't do it for retail. retail wasn't even a concept. And then we had the market crash. We opened in 84 and 87, the market crashed and all our clients ended up dispersing to different parts of the country, getting some different jobs. And one particular client that had, they ended up moving to California and she called us on the phone and spoke to Peter and asked Peter if he would be kind enough and sent her two jars of the deep treatment.

39:54We packed it up, wrapped them up and shipped them out to her. And then we started getting phone calls about having, can you ship the deep treatment here? Can you ship the deep treatment here? And Peter stood one day and he said, why are we doing this? I think we just started a new business. We're going to start a direct response company. Wait, were you advertising in magazines or did you print up a catalog or what? We printed up a catalog for our own clients. And then once we started making a little bit more money we can afford to advertise, we started advertising in back pages of magazines where they have that small eighth of a page ad.

40:35And we used to put ads in there. And then we went to quarter page ad. And little by little, that's how we started advertising. Wow. Wow. And at what point did the both of you, you and Peter, say, we need to find a manufacturer to help us because our orders are too big for us to do this on our own? That was about, I would say, 90, 91, 92 when we started doing that. And then through the network of the clientele, we were introduced to a gentleman who owned a manufacturing company. His name was Nikos Moriaris, who passed away several years ago. And he actually had the company called Mana. which is one of the largest manufacturers who did products for Mac, Chanel, everybody.

41:19L 'Oreal, a lot of products. And he was kind enough. He took us under his wing and he started making small amount of products for each SKU till we grew. And we grew with him when we stayed with him for almost 30 years. Meantime, you, which we didn't mention, you also became a mother to two children in a short period of time. I think they're two years or three years apart. And I guess at a certain point, I mean, you and Peter decide you want to raise your family in Connecticut. So what did you do? Did you commute back and forth every day from Connecticut to New York City? No. In 91, we ended up taking the direct response company, the mail order products, and the family and moved to Connecticut.

42:08We needed more space. So it was cheaper to find more space in Connecticut warehouse. So we ended up getting a farmhouse and we ran the mail order out of the farmhouse. So Peter and the two kids were in Connecticut the whole time. I, in return, stayed in the city for five days and went home on the weekend. So I would get on the train early Tuesday morning, get to New York, stay in New York till Saturday after work, get on a train and go back to Connecticut. And we did that for almost 16 years. Wow. For 16 years. 16 years. That's what we needed to do. And that's the only thing we could do. And it was difficult.

42:54So you were away from your husband and kids for four days a week. Five. And he had to do it for 16 years. That's what it took. Peter had the children. He had the mail order. All the deliveries and supplies went through him. He was running the books from there. He was doing everything. So he had one end. Product formulation. I had the stylist. We had the salon. So we split it right down the middle. And we just put our heads right to the ground and kept on doing it. And you were also still a stylist. I mean, you were still cutting hair every day. Every single day till I decided to stop cutting hair permanently.

43:32Every day. When we come back in just a moment, the business deal that allows Weida to finally step away from the salon after more than 40 years of styling hair. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

43:59my name is victor bamiboe from platy state nigeria and my favorite episode of hibt is the one with louis van an especially like that episode because it shows the power of education to be a force for social mobilization a force for change a force for empowerment i also like that episode because it shows how someone from a region like mine can succeed by solving hard problems thank you very much for H-I-B-T. I really love the podcast. Please keep up the good work. If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why.

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45:05Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the mid-1990s, and Weedad Wise has a thriving salon in New York and a growing line of hair care products. And then she discovers a new source of revenue, teaching other stylists how to cut curly hair. Hairdressers started hearing about this curly hair salon. People work with curly hair. When you go to hairdressing school, you are not taught how to work with curly hair, even till the 90s. So the hairdressers would come in in disguise as clients into the salon to try to get a haircut and try to capture what we are doing so they can go and provide their clients.

45:46And after a while, it became apparent. so I used to block any photography in the salon whatsoever I started sensing I know that's what's going on so let's just stop it this is my my product I want to be able to manage it I just don't want people going out and just damaging hair so we launched an education program and it was a certification for hairdressers so it became a revenue it became a completely independent revenue. So we would put their name as an affiliate stylist. Then we were able to send them clients. I mean, it's so interesting because like on the one hand, I'm thinking of you commuting back and forth to Connecticut for the weekend, working in the salon all day, formulating ingredients for products, Peter selling those products.

46:33And part of me is like, wait, why didn't you just focus entirely on products. Why didn't you just pour all of your money that you had into promoting products and turning it into a national brand? It's more complicated than that, of course. But yeah, I'm just wondering why. Was that something you and Peter talked about? No, it wasn't even a thought. That would have taken the wind out of me. That would have taken in my soul. It was the connection. It was the relationship. It was the depth. It was so powerful that it meant so much than just the haircut. I've had clients that one particular woman that comes to mind, and still I am in contact with her.

47:19I haven't been in a salon for almost 10 years now. She was the first Marine lawyer in New York City. Her husband was a rabbi. She had the curliest hair you could imagine. Could not try a case with her hair down. She had to always pull it back and be somebody else. And for her to be able to be herself while she's trying the case, that is the ultimate freedom. And to me, that meant much more, honestly, the money. A curly hair client becomes a client for a lifetime. So products was secondary. Here's how you manage it at home. You know, I'm often asked by people about things like product market fit, you know, or where do I find opportunity?

48:02And this is like a classic example of that. Like, you know, most people just were ignoring this enormous opportunity of millions of people with curly hair who weren't being served. And you just had a hunch that there was, because you knew you needed it, that there were people who could use this and who could benefit from this? Absolutely. When I was younger, people used to ask me like, what made you just do curly hair? And I used to say it's a vendetta for all the goddamn awful haircut that I have gotten for people not knowing how to do my hair as this is to get them all back to show them how to do it.

48:39And when I was going to beauty editors, talking to them, trying to convince them about curly hair, I've had so many eye rolls. I have had so many thank you very discreetly will think about it, trying to get me out of their face, literally, because I was so energized and going crazy with them, telling them, like, look at what you're missing. I was literally screaming at them sometimes for my passion. But then I think in the late 1990s, I think you really turned a corner with your products because you released something called the Climate Control Collection. And this is a line of products that helped, I guess, people with curly hair, right, avoid frizz in humid weather.

49:17And I think even to this day, it's like one of your best-selling products. It basically like really opened up that part of your business, right? It definitely opened the doors to be accepted with the editors and everywhere else. The original climate controlled gel. It's a gel that you put in your hair after you shampoo and condition to style your hair. And that works with the moisture in the air, with the humidity. So the actual polymers will expand in humidity, open up like a Pac-Man, if I can say that. Yeah. And then when they go indoors from the humidity, they retract holding the cuticle down.

49:55So it actually manages your frizz. And they, I remember when I was introducing it, that's when the beauty editors started opening up to me and really accepting. And then hair companies started coming after me and L 'Oreal wanted me to work with them with their Garnier line and bumble and bumble with their, and then all of a sudden a lot of companies, Unilever I worked with, to help out with their product line in Latin America. But that particular product definitely gave us a huge jump. Yeah. All right. So you've got this hot product, and you've got the salon, and it's a crazy life that you're living, back and forth between your family and New York City for days at a time.

50:36And then in 2001, on 9-11, I guess you happened to be home in Connecticut, but I think you literally had people walking into the salon on that day covered in dust and ash. Oh my God. I had stayed in Connecticut that day. My kids had just gotten on the buses to go to school and everybody was glued to a television set. It was Peter. He had three other people working with him and the UPS guy. And that's when I found out about September 11th, I called up immediately the salon. Leticia, our manager, was there. She said, two stylists made it in. The rest have not made it in. It's very, very quiet, and we can't get home.

51:22All of a sudden, people started walking in covered in dust, head to toe, white, completely dusty, would just come in and say, can you wash my hair? Can you wash my hair? and my stylist spent all day long with people coming in and just getting grinsed. They were just in trance and they, in the back of their head, that's how comfortable that place was for them, that they just went up to get washed. Leticia said there was no conversation whatsoever, no conversation with the stylist, nothing, just towel dry their hair. They comb it, put it back, turn around, walk out. Everybody was a zombie. I arrived the very next day.

52:09I was able to get in. My whole team and I were down making sandwiches for the firefighters. That was an unbelievable experience. And yes, the salon was a haven, a comfort for our clients. Wow. Not much longer after that, you got a very, very scary diagnosis. Almost the same diagnosis that your mother had that eventually took her life, also breast cancer. I think you were roughly the same age. Exact age. That she was when she was diagnosed, yeah. Yep. I was 46 years old, and April, I had a bilateral mastectomy. I was diagnosed with breast cancer like my mom did. And I decided to go the extreme because I didn't want to be a cancer patient having seen what she went through.

53:01But that was a very difficult time for me. I read that you, of course, you had very aggressive surgery treatment, and it's a long process. There's all kinds of treatments and surgeries that go into particularly what you went through. This was a five-year battle. I mean, I think you were on medication for about five years. Is that right? I was. and I went right back to work after three months, which was not recommended. But I came right back and we ended up continuing education and the grueling schedule, but it was five solid years. Wow. And I think I was helped by many people, by my mom. And medicine was very different.

53:51When my mother had it, there were these choices. I mean, you've been a survivor now for, you're now 20 years survivor. I mean, more than 20 years. 22. Yeah. And I read that initially, you didn't tell many people. You kept it to yourself, which I can understand. I can really relate to that, that you actually didn't, you wanted to be very private and you didn't want that many people to know. I didn't want to have that stigma around me. I wanted to move on and go forward. And just my concentration was who I am and what I want, what I love doing. And I didn't want that to be in my way. I didn't want my team to know.

54:31My team knew what I had, but they didn't know the level that I had because I didn't want them to fear their careers. I didn't want them to worry about what was going to happen to them. In having to tell the children, I wanted to make sure that we told our kids, but also to comfort them without lying to them. You know, like I'm going to be okay. I'm going to do everything that's needed. And you're going to see me at home for a while. And this is what I'm going through. Wow. All right. Meantime, you did not give yourself a whole lot of time to get out of the business. You were back pretty quickly.

55:08And you guys eventually move into a larger facility in Manhattan, I think 5 ,000 square feet. But I want to jump ahead slightly to around 2007. From what I've read, around 2006, your revenue is estimated to be around$10 million. You guys had a really significant business between the salon and the products. And I have to imagine you started to get inquiries from other, you know, from investors, private equity, people saying, hey, do you want to maybe have some kind of joint venture? Are you looking for investors? Did that start to happen? Yes, it did. That started to happen before 207. Every once in a while, we would have a particular company out of Boston would reach out to us and talk to us and tell us what they could do with us and help us grow the business.

56:00and we just weren't interested. The business was doing really well. It was only Peter and I. But the expansion of the business and the demand was getting so big that we needed to get a team in there. And it was very difficult to hire a C-level team. Now, mind you, we were the C-level team, whether we were the chief of sanitation or the chairman of the board or the CFO. We were all the Cs, all two of us. We seed everything. And we laugh about it all the time, but we needed more help. And at that time, I was doing Sephora, I was doing Home Shopping Network, I was flying around teaching certified salons with the team.

56:39It was nonstop. So that sounded wonderful that we could get help. And then we decided opening our eyes and considering the fact of having an equity firm. And actually, we had one out of San Francisco join us in 2007. And tell me about how that happened. I mean, I'm assuming they came to you with some, you know, a nice potential check, which would be amazing. But probably there was more to the story. There's a lot more to it. I didn't know the process. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I couldn't imagine giving up the actual business itself. I couldn't imagine changing it. So when the equity, we had several people reach out to us.

57:24And one of my clients was from, ran merger and acquisition for UBS. And I had told him I were getting approached by a couple of equity firms. And he said to me, do you know the process of it? And I looked at him and I'm like, no, Walter, I don't know anything about it. So Peter and I got a quick lesson and decided that JH is the equity firm we joined. And he had did the whole process for us. And he explained it where it's like you put them all up in the gate and you open the doors and they go running and see the one who gives you the best bed. But it wasn't about the money. It was who was going to work harmoniously with us and to be able to keep the integrity of what we were doing.

58:06I mean, by that point, you'd been in business for 23 years. You'd started the salon in 84 and they bought a majority stake in the company. And I imagine, you know, you'd been through cancer and you were you had worked like crazy for so long. I imagine that part of you was just like kind of feeling excited about maybe just stepping back a little bit. Yes. And eventually I wanted to completely stop at the age of 55. So in the back of our head, that was always the plan. So did you step back right away? I mean, they bought a majority share of the company. No, no, no. I didn't step back till 2014. I was in the salon, cutting hair, living the same life that I did, because it's exactly what I love to do.

58:55Wow. And my poor partners were not allowed to set foot in the salon. They were only allowed to be in the corporate office. And whatever discussion they wanted to do was in the corporate office. No one was allowed to come into the salon. That was my domain, my kingdom, and my team. And I respect them for that. And eventually, when we decided to move on to, you know, just completely sell the company, that's when I stepped back. And I think that happened in 2018. Yeah. But I have to imagine that when the private equity group, when they bought, when JH Partners bought a majority stake in WeDod, they were really interested in expanding the product line.

59:36right? It wasn't, I mean, they probably weren't focused on building out a bunch of salons. They really wanted to get the products on shelves of stores. Yes. This is fascinating. The difference of the Ouidard Salon and the regular hair salon. The way the Ouidard Salon worked was you came in as a client. We educated you. We were the doctors of curly hair and we prescribed what you can use for your hair to maintain what we did that you loved. And when they came in, they infused the money to expand more SKUs into, yes, that's exactly what they wanted to do. And it took them five years to understand in order for those extra SKUs to be sold, you couldn't just place them on the shelf.

1:00:24They had to be educated because they need to understand it. And, you know, when you partner with an equity firm, they come in with their spreadsheet. That's how they know how to work. And it was fun watching them and growing with them. I'm sure I wasn't their best fan. But they got the products onto the shelves of Ulta and, you know, big beauty stores, whereas before it was mainly direct to consumer or in the salons. Yeah, they had the financial power to be able and the connection and the network to get in there. Absolutely. They expanded it and thank God for them. Yeah. So 2018, another group outright acquires WeDod.

1:01:06And I think that was also the year where you're officially your ties to this brand end, right? You kind of are officially out because they buy all the shares up. Right. So tell me a little bit about life after we died. I mean, you yourself said it was the feeling that I could give people. It was this idea that I could transform the way they felt about themselves and how they looked. And it was emotional. People would literally hug me and cry. Now, I mean, you step out and you don't have that feedback as much. What was that like for you when you decided to kind of retire? Physically, I was exhausted.

1:01:51Yeah. And you're on your feet all day for 40 years. Yes, 41. I was exhausted. Emotionally, I was ready to step back. But I am right now at the height of what I want. I am helping, first of all, my main team of WIDAD, the hairdressers that worked with me for 21 years. Most of them have their own studios to which I am consulting, working with them and helping them build. A lot of the certified hairdressers that were certified by WIDAD are in contact with me still to this day, not only about WIDAD, about how to expand their business. So I consult now. So I'm pretty busy. I'm very happy giving forward, going onward, and I really enjoy it.

1:02:38Is your consulting life a business or is it entirely volunteer? Volunteer. I've had so many angels in my business who have helped us. For example, the women who ran all the direct response for Hearst publication in the back of their magazines, those little mail orders. We had no idea how to do that. She was a client who had curly hair and would sit with Peter and teach him exactly how to do it. We're self-taught. And me, just giving back to women entrepreneurs, I will do anything and everything to help them out. It's such a wonderful, gratifying feeling to see them grow. Yeah. You now live in Florida, I think.

1:03:23Between Florida and Rhode Island. And Rhode Island. I go back and forth. And you and Peter are still married, I think, more than 40 years now. Yes, yes, 42. And we're both still alive. We haven't killed each other. Yeah. I mean, how did you manage that? Because the story you tell about how you guys built the business, and part of it was you were apart from each other for four days a week for 17 years. Did you guys ever get down to the wire and really just have it out? Or did you just both stay in your lanes and that's how it worked. We definitely stayed in our lanes. He was the CEO, CFO, COOC, everything you can imagine.

1:04:05I was the creative artist, the educator, the formulator, the trainer, and it's just completely, completely separate worlds in two separate places. And that's how it worked. Yes. I mean, that's why it worked. Yes. And if there was any discussion about work, it was decision that needed to be done, how to move forward on something was at the dinner table, which involved our kids, which now we hear was a great fun for them to be able to hear and learn about that. Yeah. And definitely at the beginning, you both had the right skill sets because he came from restaurant management and you were like a chef.

1:04:43And so he knew how to work with that kind of person. He could manage the front of the house while you manage the back while you're actually making the food, which was hair in this case. Yes. Our toughest time is this retirement where we're both home together. It's like, whoa.

1:05:04We Dad, when you think about, you know, going from this kid from Rhode Island who was an immigrant who barely spoke English at 11 or 12, to building up a career as a hairdresser, to building your own salon, and then turning it into a really significant brand in this space for curly hair. How much of where you are today do you attribute to the crazy hard work you put in, which was so hard? And how much do you think has to do with just the timing and getting lucky? I think quite a bit is timing. A lot of people work very, very hard and do not get the chances to be able to build. I think timing has a lot to do with it.

1:05:49I think luck was a great deal of help, but work. You had to be there and you had to be doing the work. And I think when you work very hard and you're really focused and just doing exactly from the heart, not doing it for the sake of doing it, doing it because you love what you're doing, that does get picked up and it gets rewarded. That's Widad Wise, co-founder, along with her husband Peter, of Widad Salons and Hair Care Products. She and Peter also founded a charitable organization called Curls for a Cure, which donates money to breast cancer research. And by the way, even though Weedad no longer works at the company that bears her name, she still catches herself acting like she does.

1:06:33For example, if I was in Ulta the other day and some of the bottles weren't displayed the way I used to display my shelf, I redid the whole shelf. It's not my company. It's just that's the way I wanted it.

1:07:13Our engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Kwasi Lee. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, John Isabella, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

1:07:42If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Thank you.