How to start, scale & stay married Marie du Petit Thouars & Matt Berkson, Maison Louis Marie

0:00Matt Berkson:In today's episode of How to Start Up, I'm joined by Marie du Petit Thouars and Matt Berkson, the founders and partners behind Maison de Rue Marie, the clean luxury fragrance house that blends centuries-old botanical heritage with modern consciousness. We discuss how they've turned a personal passion project into a global brand while learning to start, scale and stay married along the way. Marie started her brand and then brought on her husband, Matt, as CEO. So we really delve into the guts of what it's like to start a business with your life partner. They share some very funny anecdotes as to what happened with their startup and what happened within their relationship as they grew the business into this amazing success.

0:41Matt Berkson:They also share fantastic advice for any couple or friendship partnership who are thinking of starting a business together. So keep listening to hear the founders of Maison Louis Marie talk about how to start up and stay married. It's really delightful to meet you both. I know we're going to talk about everything starting up and staying married because you're both life partners and business partners. Before we do that, I'd love it if you could just introduce when you started your beautiful fragrance house. I started Maison Louis Marie in 2013. I was making candles for Christmas for gifts for my friends.

1:19Matt Berkson:And I was always drawn to like beautiful luxury candles, but they're very pricey. So you end up not wanting to burn them because you don't want to like keep them longer. So I decided to like try to make candles who are really beautifully made, good quality, but half the price. And because of my friend kept asking me more and more candles, I was like, why don't I just create a brand? And I dig deep in my DNA and my family history. And it was quite natural and very easy, actually, to create the brand because it's basically in some ways in my blood. So it was just like a continuation of who I am with a lot of background history too.

2:04Matt Berkson:And I guess also what was easy is when I created the six first fragrances, they were all based on memories. Like Scalpe, the number one, was an island in Scotland that my cousin owned. And we went there on a vacation and we learned to make our own batter. It was so cool. Well, isn't it your sense of smell is most linked to memory? So it takes you straight back to somewhere. So for you, you're pulling on your memories. So did you start the business together from the day one or did Matthew come into the business at some point? No, I started by myself. But whilst married to Matthew or hadn't met Matthew?

2:43Matt Berkson:Not yet. We were together. And that's very important, actually. It's a good question because we moved in together and Matt had his own company and he really inspired me because he would get up every morning, even if he was sick. He was out the door by seven and back at six. And I was like, wow, that's a really amazing work ethic. Like it's very inspiring. Like at the time I was doing art and photography and I was like more on an artist's schedule. And I was like, maybe that's not the way to do it. So when I started by myself, And Matt really inspired me. And then I always told him, like, why don't you come and work with me?

3:23Matt Berkson:Why don't you? And he's like, no, no way. We can't work together. And like, you'd have to like really sell a lot of candles for me to come in. And then I was like, how many? And then he's like, well, you need to at least sell 10 ,000 candles a month. I was like, God, that's going to take me a while. Anyways, three years later, or two years later, I got pregnant and I was still begging him. And he was like, okay, I'll come. I was pretty much at 10 ,000 candles a month. And that's when he came. He joined in 2016 and we start working together. But I was very honest since the beginning. I didn't want to have battle of like, I created it, I'm the boss.

4:08Matt Berkson:I said to him, you can be the boss. I just want to be the creative person. I was going to ask how you divided and conquered. how do you know what job you wanted to do versus what job your new recruit was going to do? And obviously, I'm going to ask Matt these questions as well from his perspective. But Marie, you go first. Matt was always like, he studied business. I studied art. So I always knew that Matt would be amazing for the business. And I can just create what I want. And then he just has to find a way to sell it. This is, by the way, very Chanel of you. This is what Chanel did with the Vertheimers.

4:42Matt Berkson:She was like, I just want to create. You can do the numbers. Just let me be creative. Yeah. And I always think that in a couple, maybe I'm like old style, but I feel that a man, he likes to be like, it's important for him to be the boss, like in some ways. And I really don't care. Matt, would you agree with that?

5:03Marie du Petit Thouars:I mean, not necessarily, but I mean, in the situation that we're in, it's not like I'm the total boss. We collaborate on everything, even from, you know, even business decisions to creative decisions, but definitely on the creative side, I defer to her. Like, it does make sense to, you know, fill the CEO role and be able to kind of make decisions. Obviously, we're talking to each other all the time and, you know, everything is kind of run by both of us.

5:30Matt Berkson:On that, it must have been, I mean, were you at all apprehensive coming from a loving home personal partnership into a business professional partnership?

5:39Marie du Petit Thouars:In a way, it seemed pretty natural to work with Marie. And I mean, she's characterizing it like, you know, I didn't want to join. You know, we weren't married at the time, but you know, we were kind of on our way to getting married. And then with the kid, it was more of just like putting all your eggs in one basket situation of just like, it's a huge risk to go all in on your own company. So I just wanted to make sure that, you know, if we did join forces, that it would work.

6:05Matt Berkson:Well, it's a huge risk bringing a CEO in. It's such a senior hire. It's probably the most senior hire a brand can do. But then it must be a blessing and a curse because you obviously know each other inside out, through and through. You've gone through lots of challenges before. There must be benefits to that, but also cons. Matt, I wondered if you could give us the pro and the con of working with your life partner. I mean, did you have to do an interview?

6:29Marie du Petit Thouars:No, not at all. Because, you know, I was around watching Marie in the very beginning. So of course, I was so familiar with what she was building and kind of in awe of how well she did at the beginning. I mean, she had an art studio in Echo Park in kind of the east side of Los Angeles and just built that into her office and built the website on her own, figured out how to set up a Shopify account. The brand was too small for a FedEx pickup. So she was lugging packages to FedEx, picking and packing orders. So I was seeing it firsthand and I was just amazed at how she kind of built it from the beginning.

7:04Marie du Petit Thouars:And so like, you know, she created such a perfect like foundation right at the beginning, you know, like it made my job easy in some ways.

7:14Matt Berkson:Marie, do you think if you weren't about to go on maternity leave, you would have still recruited Matthew? Oh yeah. I knew exactly like this is a person like any company would be very happy to have him. So I was like, yeah, yeah, totally. And it was a good excuse actually that I was pregnant, that I needed help because like that had to come. And when you were saying like the pros and cons, like, I mean, we're so different. It's like the yin and the yang. Like we have totally different strengths. So the combination is perfect because he's really good for business, but also he has a good eye. And then we just like ask questions and like, do you like this?

7:54Matt Berkson:You want to do that? And then we just talk it together and we have a lot of respect for each other. So we never cite. Really? Because I was going to say, I mean, I don't have a business partner and I'm grateful for it in some ways. But also I look at people who do and I'm very envious because the amount of support at that senior level would be incredible. But I also know that if it didn't work and there were glitches, it'd be a very different exit or difficult conversation to have. I think you have to be able to separate little boxes in your brain and the home. And if you can do that, it works really well.

8:28Matt Berkson:Do you compartmentalize? So you get home and you're like, right, we cannot talk about the brand. No, we do. Like he always comes back, new samples and things like that. And I'm like, oh my God, can I do this later? But I laugh about it. It never stops. That's the con. Yeah. Well, that's any business, isn't it? You just have to think about it all the time. You just always have to have respect. And in life, you treat people with respect. And if you don't like something, you say it in a nice way and then work like to make it good but we've always had the same taste even in furniture or like vacation so it's very easy to make it grow and and work together because we're kind on the same page and yeah the con is really just like you have to bring it home but then a problem shared is a problem halved and I bring it home and I got no one to tell I'm just like oh I'll just carry on problem solving on my own so that's why I go to co-working offices because I think I've got that community support there and I can have a problem shared problem halved through comrades as someone said right at the beginning of my business six years ago so as long as you're fine with like dreaming about clients thinking about them in the shower when you're going to run you're going to be fine you're never going to switch off and I'd always had a good work ethic and I you know always tried and worked really hard for these amazing brands I had some fantastic training from but I did switch off and you could potentially also 20 years ago leave it in the office whereas today we are also connected.

9:53Matt Berkson:For you guys, is there any practical advice you'd give other couples thinking of going into business together as to how to draw that boundary and how to kind of protect both relationships?

10:03Marie du Petit Thouars:I mean, you have to be somewhat adept at kind of sensing the room in a way. I mean, you know, like there's certain times in the evening, obviously, you know, like I'm constantly thinking about the brand, but like, you know, you just have to understand when to kind of leave it alone or leave it for the next day or talk about it later. So, I mean, you just have to be very respectful and sense kind of like the appropriate times to kind of deal with certain things, you know, that which I've always tried to do. But, you know, sometimes, yeah, like, because Marie works not in our office. So it's like, we're talking a lot throughout the day about the company.

10:38Marie du Petit Thouars:But then obviously, when we see each other in the evenings, there's, you know, it's hard because like, we're both tired, yet, you know, I'll have to bring home samples or the creative decisions to be made. And, you know, certain times it's just like, you know, we'll just leave it for the next day. Other times, you know, it'll make sense to kind of deal with it in the evening.

10:56Matt Berkson:Now that's interesting. So you've put a physical boundary in place that you're not in a shared office space. And I think that really helped me a lot, actually, because when we started, we were in the same room and that was kind of like a little hard. I'm someone who really liked my own time and to be alone. And then in the second office, I had my own office. And I thought that was amazing because I had my space. And I think it's very important that you have your own space. But then when the pandemic hit, I stayed home and I never went back to the office after because I realized how much I love it.

11:32Matt Berkson:I think way more clearer, quicker, because I don't have the noise. We always have our office next to the warehouse. So there's the employees, there's everything going on. Now I'm just like at home, it's quiet. So that was a good discovery. It's good for your creativity. Yes. And for us too, because it's like, yeah, we work together, but Matt lives in the morning and comes back at night. You can miss each other a bit. You're not physically in the same space creating. Exactly. Yeah. And I think it's so difficult, isn't it, when work can be all-consuming to know what to do first and when and how have you divided i mean it sounds fairly obvious that if one of you has a business background and one of you's creative you've divided those but given that any founder is also it hr payroll culture community social there's so many other things outside of your actual day job that you have to do did you do some work around that in terms of dividing those extra roles or was the business at a stage where you had other people doing those things uh in the beginning like i think matt he took over the production and the sales and i did the accounting the inventory and the creativity and then i think i one day i called matt and i said matt i don't want to do accounting and inventory anymore like it's too much i think it was in 2019 there's nothing like dampening your creativity by looking at a spreadsheet i imagine yeah it was like so hard because I was like doing the inventory and the spreadsheet and I couldn't go from one to the other and then he said don't worry like that's what's cool with Matt it's like you don't want to do something you don't have to he's like okay we'll find you someone don't worry and then I was so scared that someone is going to take my job and replace me but then it was for the best yeah it's interesting you say that it's hard isn't it letting go because when you've done everything yourself to then and proven you can do it yourself you're able exhausted and especially if you're raising a family as well, you've got other things that need you at home.

13:33Matt Berkson:You can't work till midnight every night. How did you learn to let go? I just had to trust that someone else was going to do a good job as I did. And then you have to learn also to understand that sometimes they can make mistakes, but the mistakes are going to be fixed. And then we met Alessandro. He came in too. And he's amazing because he was working for the accounting company, but he was IT. He was just like fast. Like when you had a question, he knew he was not like, you know, sometimes people talk for four minutes to say two things. And we hired him too. And he was a great hire too. Right, Matt?

14:14Matt Berkson:So, and then we got someone for the sales. And as you're growing, you are recruiting. Little by little. Yeah. Because you're on Sephora and Goop, right? You're not a startup anymore. You're very significantly present in the market. You know what I think was really helpful is that when the pandemic hit, you had to start working on Zoom and we were able to find amazing people in any kind of like jobs all over the world and work with them through Zoom. And you meet with them once or twice a week. And it's amazing. Right, Matt? It's so efficient.

14:50Marie du Petit Thouars:Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Yeah, a lot of our employees, because I think now we have 20 people on our team. We do run our own warehouse. So a lot of that is in our warehouse. But like Marie said, we in the past kind of three to four years, we've added a CFO with Alessandro. Alice is our head of ops and then Massime, our head of sales. So yeah, we have a very strong team and some are remote, some are in office. But yeah, it's kind of like Marie. It's like in some ways, almost, I think, easier for everyone not to be in the same office. in a way. Because especially when you find really good people that you can trust, I mean, you don't need to be in the office with them.

15:28Matt Berkson:Trust is everything.

15:29Marie du Petit Thouars:Yeah. I just think it's better for everyone in a way.

15:32Matt Berkson:It's interesting. There's a big debate around this because we, having had years and years of experience under our belts, know what we're doing and how to work. And my colleague, Francesca, came to me straight out of university. Incredible recruit and amazing person to work with. We do hybrids. So we see each other once or twice a week, but predominantly working remotely. For her personality and the way she works, that really suits her. But I know there's other people that have come and joined the team, but they need people all the time. And I'm at a point in my career and it's my business where I'm like, I don't want to be needed by somebody all the time.

16:04Matt Berkson:I just want to get my head down and do it my way. And you could argue that's quite a selfish approach. But then if I'm going to work this hard, I'm going to do it the way I want. And that's the autonomy you get yourself when you start a business. But I think it's the type of work you do and how you work at work. But Francesca and I debated this last week. She He said, I wouldn't have learned anything had I done it all remotely because you, as a youngster, have to absorb quite a lot of skills by osmosis, by being around people. The Fathom AI founder came on the podcast a couple of months ago and he said, we just don't recruit anyone under 30 anymore because AI's replaced them.

16:35Matt Berkson:I was like, but what about your pipeline? What's going to happen in eight years when you're trying to recruit the next 30-year-old to be the senior hire? It's a really interesting one. Have you kind of skewed it to say it's completely up to you if you come in or stay at home, depending on what they prefer? Or have you sort of insisted that some, obviously the warehouse, you need people in the warehouse?

16:54Marie du Petit Thouars:Yeah, I'm pretty old school. Like I love going into the office. I mean, occasionally if I have to work from home, I will, but like I just work best in an office.

17:02Matt Berkson:You hate to work from home. But you know yourself at work.

17:06Marie du Petit Thouars:Yeah. But I mean, like you said, I think, you know, early on in our careers, I mean, I was working in an office, was an assistant to an executive for years and learned so much. And that kind of the early days of being in an office, learning the politics, learning how to deal with people was key. So yeah, I think you need that experience early on. But then as you grow in your career and become more senior, yeah, I think it's less important. Although there needs to be a lot of communication within your company too. So there is a trade-off to not everyone being in the office, but, you know, certain roles.

17:43Marie du Petit Thouars:Yeah, like they just definitely.

17:44Matt Berkson:And also like Mas, Alisson, Alessandro, like they're more like our age. They're like from another generation. So they obviously don't need to be around people, I guess. Have your junior hires requested more FaceTime with you guys? Are they getting enough that they need to do their roles?

18:03Marie du Petit Thouars:Yeah, I mean, most of our junior hires will be in the office because it just works better.

18:08Matt Berkson:And we remember someone requested not wanting to come every day and we told them it's not going to work. You really have to come every day to learn how to let the ropes because at 22, 23, you don't know anything. The work they're likely doing is more office-based work. My background's in PR and I used to run down to reception with all the send-outs to journalists. You physically have to do that. That was my job. And I work with a lot of jewellers as well as fragrance designers and they have to sit at a bench to make jewellery. They can't do that on a bus or on a beach or wherever working remotely.

18:44Matt Berkson:So it's a really interesting debate. But talking of boundaries, that obviously you've set the boundary with yourselves and you know how you both prefer to work at work. And that's trickled down in the culture as well. Are there any other systems or habits that you've created to help you both in your partnerships?

19:01Marie du Petit Thouars:For some reason, we have a magical relationship where we, you know, we just like naturally, I don't think are like...

19:07Matt Berkson:Do you mind me asking how long you were together before you went into business together? Oh, we were a long time together because I think we dated for five years. And then we got married in 2015. Matt's like, are you? No, I have the worst. He has the worst. He always says six months for everything. Oh, it was six months ago. So we got married in 2006 years and then he came on the seventh year. So we knew each other for seven years. Yeah. So you knew each other pretty well by that stage. Yeah, yeah. And I think I went there this summer. I love people listening. If they're thinking about going to partnership, even with a friend or partnerships full stop, what sort of questions should they ask each other before signing a business agreement with each other?