Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder

“The most formidable competitor that you can conjure up is yourself.”

PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF

Business is not something to be lightly tried on, flippantly modeled. It’s not a distraction, not an affair, not a momentary fling. Business marries you. You sleep with it, eat with it, think about it much of your time. It is, in a very real sense, an act of love. If it isn’t an act of love, it’s merely work, not business.

What makes a successful businesswoman?

“Is it talent? Well, perhaps, although I’ve known many enormously successful people who were not gifted in any outstanding way, not blessed with particular talent. Is it, then, intelligence? Certainly, intelligence helps, but it’s not necessarily education or the kind of intellectual reasoning needed to graduate from the Wharton School of Business that are essential. How many of your grandfathers came here from one or another “old country” and made a mark in America without the language, money, or contacts? What, then, is the mystical ingredient? It’s persistence. It’s that certain little spirit that compels you to stick it out just when you’re at your most tired. It’s that quality that forces you to persevere, find the route around the stone wall. It’s the immovable stubbornness that will not allow you to cave in when everyone says give up.”
I want to paint a picture of the young girl I was — a girl caught up, mesmerized by pretty things and pretty people. Thinking about my childhood now reveals such early patterns. My drive and persistence were always there, and those are qualities that are essential for building a successful business. Still, I sometimes wonder if I had set my heart on selling tassels, cars, furniture, or anything else but beauty, would I have risen to the top of a profession? Somehow I doubt it. I believed in my product. I loved my product. I loved to touch the creams, smell them, look at them, carry them with me. A person has to love her harvest if she’s to expect others to love it. And beauty was such a bountiful harvest.

First comes the shy wish. Then you must have the heart to have the dream. Then, you work. And work.

“Don’t do it,” was the advice.

“The mortality rate in the cosmetics industry is high, and you’ll rue the day you invested your savings and your time into this impossible business. Estée and Joe, we beg of you, don’t do it.”

We did it. Today Leonard is fond of saying, and I agree, that “accountants and lawyers make great accountants and lawyers. We need them, but we make the business decisions.” No one else. We make them.

Mark Twain once said something like “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.” Small people always do that. But the really great make you feel that you too can become great.

Our first year’s sales amounted to about $50,000. Expenses ate up just about every dime. No matter. Forward. There was a stone wall in my path after my successes at Saks and Neiman-Marcus, and I was determined to leap over it, or at the very least, tiptoe around it.
- Forward is not just a direction, it’s a mindset.

“Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires.”

Go After Your Dreams

From where you sit, you can probably reach out with comparative ease and touch a life of serenity and peace. You can wait for things to happen and not get too sad when they don’t. That’s fine for some but not for me. Serenity is pleasant, but it lacks the ecstasy of achievement.

I’ve insisted on the long stretch rather than the gentle reach.

Living the American dream has been intense difficult work, but I couldn’t have hoped for a more satisfying life. I believe that potential is unlimited- success depends on daring to act on dreams. How far do you want to go? Go the distance! Within each person is the potential to build the empire of her wishes, and don’t allow anyone to say you can’t have it all. You can- you can have it all if you’re willing to work.

No one has to settle for the mediocre if she has dreams of glory. I’ve always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. My whole life has been about fulfilling dreams. I kept my eye on the target, whatever that target was. I’ve never allowed my eye to leave the particular target of the moment, whether it was a lovely warm meeting with my adorable grandchildren, a business achievement, plans for an extraordinary party, or even just a quiet evening at home. Whether your target is big or small, grand or simple, ambitious or personal, I’ve always believed that success comes from not letting your eyes stray from that target. Anyone who wants to achieve a dream must stay strong, focused and steady. She must expect and demand perfection and never settle for mediocrity.

If you push yourself beyond the furthest place you think you can go, you’ll be able to achieve your heart’s dream.

Visualize, said Leonard to the businesswomen. He meant it quite literally. I know, as he does, that one can will oneself to success.

If in your mind’s eye you see a successful venture, a deal made, a profit accomplished, it has a superb chance of actually happening. Projecting your mind into a successful situation is the most powerful means to achieve goals. If you spend time with pictures of failure in your mind, you will orchestrate failure. Countless times, before the event, I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way and the picture in my mind became a reality. I’ve visualized suc- cess, then created the reality from the image. Great athletes, business people, inventors, and achievers from all walks of life seem to know this secret. Norman Cousins, the writer, was once told he had a fatal illness. He absolutely refused to accept the diagnosis! Instead, he visualized himself well and happy, and made the mind picture a reality.

There is no such thing as bad times, I kept telling myself. There is no such thing as bad business. Business is there if you go after it.

Quality first, sales later.

Big business, I think, is a combination of timing, hard work, and an ability to see beyond one’s nose. Patience. People with big ideas and dreams often fail because they can’t wait out the slow times.

“Most good ideas sparkle in simplicity, so much so that everyone wonders why no one ever did that before.”

“I believe that potential is unlimited – success depends on daring to act on dreams.”

“Serenity is pleasant, but it lacks the ecstasy of achievement.”

Business itself was the purest romance for me.

My immediate problem was to find a way to make contact with many stores simultaneously. Miracle of miracles, I learned about buying offices. Have you ever noticed that when you’re concentrating with passion on a project, you start hearing or reading about things germane to that project? Perhaps it’s because your antennae are up, but I always considered it fascinating to note how the world around me responds to my particular current interests.

I didn’t need bread to eat, but I worked as though I did . . . from pure love of the venture.

But nothing happened fast…The most insidious myth of all is the one that promises magic formulas and instant success. It does not happen that way. I cried more than I ate. There was constant work, constant attention to detail, lost hours of sleep, worries, heartaches. Friends and family didn’t let a day go by without discouraging us.
Despite all the naysayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative.
Once we were in motion, we left no stone unturned.
“Well here is another challenge I couldn’t resist.”
A guidepost to excellence.

Against The Grain

It was a risk yes, but one has to risk to succeed.
I wasn’t interested in a committee vote. When I knew something was right, I ran with it.

“I won’t pay too much attention to your answer. I’ll watch your eyes. If they come alive with pleasure, its a yes… but your eyes won’t lie. If they stay dull, if they don’t dance with wonder, back to a new vial I’ll go.”

I knew there was more to perfume than a pretty scent; there has to be an idea behind it. Fragrance exists in the mind, not just in the nose.
Another myth suggested that women choose a fragrance and wear it day and night. It would become her signature. But fragrance, I knew, was much more than a signature; it was a whole personality!
- Estée was such a visionary, understanding the different aspects of how people interacted and viewed the products she created.

Love of Beauty from a Young Age

“You’re as beautiful as you think you are.” She’d tell me. She walked tall when she entered a room and held her head triumphantly. “The secret,” she’d whisper, “is to imagine yourself the most important person in that room, the person everyone else is waiting to see. If you imagine it vividly enough, you will become that person.”
Beauty is a fine invention, if the truth be known. The skilled woman can invent beauty over and over again with extraordinary effect. The art of inventing beauty transcends class, intellect, age, profession, geography— virtually every cultural and economic barrier. There isn’t a culture in the world that hasn’t powdered, perfumed, and prettied its most adored and fabled women, its most respected women. Love has been planted, wars won, and empires built on beauty. I should know. I’m an authority on all three. Love, wars, and empires have been woven into my personal tapestry for decades. I’ve been selling Beauty ever since I could recognize Her.
In every life there is a moment — an event or a realization — that changes that life irrevocably. If the change is to be a happy one, one must be able to recognize the moment and seize it without delay. Rose Kennedy once told me that good luck is something you make and bad luck is something you endure, a very wise observation indeed. People do make their luck by daring to follow their instincts, taking risks, and embracing every possibility.
An interesting point: beauty is the best incentive to self-respect. You may have great inner resources, but they don’t show up as confidence when you don’t feel pretty. People are most apt to believe you and like you when you know you look fine. And when the world approves, self respect is just a little easier.

This is the story of a bewitchment. I was irrevocably bewitched by the power to create beauty.

Uncle John had worlds to teach me.

Do you know what it means for a young girl to suddenly have someone take her dreams quite seriously? Teach her secrets?

I could think of nothing else. After school, I’d run home to practice being a scientist. I began to value myself so much more, trust my instincts, trust my uniqueness. With my uncle I was preoccupied with research into possibilities...

Trusting oneself does not always come naturally. If learned when you are young, the practice sticks. Today, there is no one who can intimidate me because of title or skill or fame. I do what’s right for me.
Recently, a well known decorator, who shall be nameless here, found this out. While we were walking up the winding staircase of my home in New York, she said to me, with a sweep of her hand that encompassed everything I’d decorated, “I could be wonders with this,” I patted her sagging cheeks. My confidence had been born years before. “I could do wonders with these,” I said.

We sold out everything.

The theory of exclusivity has always worked for Estée Lauder. Women want what is not available to multitudes.

“The buyer came down to see me after three of four days. “ How did you do it?” He asked.

“Never mind, I did it. And I’m sending you more.”

“You don’t sell cosmetics,” he responded. “You sell yourself.”

A member of the British royal family once said to me, “I am so happy since my marriage. Everyone needs someone to talk to in the still, dark hours.”

I never forgotten those words because they are so very true. During the years I was apart from Joe, in one way I had a heady, exciting time, but I’ll always remember coming home at night and not having that one, sweet, trusted someone with whom to share my deep thoughts, my secrets. You cannot fly on one wing.

The American dream is powerfully enticing, but it is a dream. One does not move from rags — poof — to riches by dreaming or by starting from zero. Henry Ford did begin building cars in a wooden shed with a door too small to allow the car through, but I guarantee he had some money to buy the shed or even the parts for the car. One could say that Estee Lauder Cosmetics started in a stable, but there was a lovely house in front of that tiny stable and a father with some means who had confidence in his daughter. Hard work, ingenuity, and inspiration are unquestionably important, but so is a little help, or a little savings — Joe’s savings, I might add.

Fortunately, our confidence equaled our excitement, because we had to have enough faith in our work to invest all our savings… Every bit of work was done by hand- four hands, Joe’s and mine.

Quality

We don’t mind admitting that we are quality fanatics. Compromise is not in our vocabulary if the compromise affects the purity of the product in any way.
“Do what is right. It will please some people and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain
People, no matter where they live or what their finances are, will spend if they’re convinced of worth.

Selling

The saleswoman was our secret weapon. She would have to shine like a beacon in the store. The selling technique was the one I had been using all of my life- touch the customer and encourage her to try the product on her own face.
It’s not enough to have the most beautiful product in the world. You must be able to sell it.

Risk, risk, risk.. The name of our game.

I am what you would call a stern taskmaster. I expect perfection. And then a little more perfection when perfection is offered. Ira once said that I was like his grandmother when she made soup. She created the most perfect soup in the world, she used every extraordinary and ordinary ingredient in her bag of tricks, and when she finished a stellar soup, she threw in a little bit more.
Packaging design should be called packaging communications. You’re telling someone about himself through the packaging.
You’re allowed to make a mistake… Once.
I have an uncompromising sense of detail which permeates everything I do.
Only by making it perfect for my own people will I be able to pass on the message that they must spend as much attention on details as I do. They will pick up the thread of what I want by being treated with excellence.
Never underestimate the value of an ally.
Imagine a business world where you are the seller and the buyers are your allies. Then, make it happen.

“What others call tough, I call persistent. If you know you’re correct, you must be firm and not bow to pressure.”

Stay quiet until you’re strong enough to be unmistakably visible.

Think small, he told the rapt audience. Thinking small brings big profits. You can do anything if you’re small enough. Conventional wisdom says the bigger you are, the more profitable and efficient you are. We disagree. We break down each of our manufacturing units all around the world into smaller, manageable groups so the directors of each can guide by reaching out, knowing everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and “touching” the personality in each person who works. This goes back to my original theory that once you touch a woman’s face, you have her. Thinking small even applies to the number of customers a business tries to reach. We’d rather aim for several great department stores who love us rather than thousands of tiny buyers who are not committed to our product.
It took every effort to keep even the modest pace going. It would be so easy to lose ground if I let up for just a moment.
I wasn’t exactly riding a meteor, but the stone I was pushing was beginning to roll.

“When a person with experience meets a person with money, pretty soon, the person with the experience will have the money and the person with the money will have the experience.” It was a good lesson to learn- even though we learned it painfully.

It wasn’t youth that made me so energetic, it was enthusiasm. That’s why I know a woman of any age has it within her to begin a business or a life’s work of any sort. It’s a fresh outlook that makes youth so attractive anyway, that quality of anything’s possible. That spirit is not owned only by those under thirty. Selling, especially, is an art form that depends on spirit-and honesty. The customer can always tell when you’re being less than candid.

If you don’t do important things when you think of them, you probably never will and may lose out.
Today they call it networking-this sharing between colleagues. It is one of the most powerful tools in the business. First, you learn to ask the right questions. Next, you learn to listen to answers. Even oblique answers. Then, you learn to act without weeks of deep introspection, without weeks of self-questioning. You move. You pick up the telephone or you take the train to the place where your interests lie. Your friend has helped you to get there. In business, as in human relations, it’s that rare touch, that person-to-person contact, that leaves the deepest impression. If you try to impress someone with your power or your wisdom, you will find it hard going. If you are sensitive to his needs, to what will bring him happiness, talking to him of his daughter’s school or of the island he and his wife have discovered, you will make him your friend.
I have a confession to make. I have been shockingly excessive in a particular area of my life. When it came to my children, I always overdid it. Each woman must choose her priorities, they say. I refused to choose either business or family. I wanted both. And, with both, I invested everything . . . sometimes too much.

Make the most of what you have. I operated, full time, on that precept. If you can’t have everything you think you deserve at that moment, you would do well to surround yourself with symbols of your ideals. In that small office, I surrounded myself with touches of the good life, the lovely and intricately tapestried life of my imagination, an imagination that has always been, I’m proud to say, large enough to admit any possibility.

Chapter 10

What I didn’t learn from business schools

The schools and the books make it all seem so cut and dried. I If you do this, you get this. Well, that’s wrong. Just as a mother comes to know and work with her toddler, an executive comes to know the special vagaries and unique sensibilities of her business and of her own inner voice that tells the truth — if she listens hard enough. It’s a delicate business, business is, and I never yet met anyone who learned her business from a book or school, just as I never met a mother who raised a wonderful child from a book. Each business person must find a style, that voice that grows clearer and louder with each success and failure. Observing your own and your competitor’s successes and failures makes your inner business voice more sure and vivid.
The pressure was to do the same. The Lauder inner voices said no, stick to what you know best and don’t change it lightly… The voice grows stronger with each success, each observed failure. All one has to do is listen- and watch.
Business is a magnificent obsession. I’ve never been bored a day in my life, partly because as a true business addict it’s never been enough to have steady work; I had to love what I was doing. Love your career or else find another. Make your success in dollars not in degrees. Respect your product.
When you’re angry, never put it in writing. I learned that rule a long time ago. If you write it down, you can never take it back. The recipient has your furious letter to rankle him for the rest of his life. It’s like carving your anger in stone. That makes implacable enemies. If you tell him face to face, eventually you’ll both cool off. You can then always smooth things over, and the relationship is not lost forever.
Keep your own image straight in your mind. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to sell the top-of-the-line, finest-quality products through the best outlets rather than through drugstores and discount stores. And so we have. We don’t do dungarees, we don’t do tablecloths. We do the best skin products available today, the best makeup and fragrance products. If I were to sell our cosmetics at discount stores, our sales would pick up for a brief time, and then decline dramatically. We are not a budget market, and we know it. The woman who buys the best (not always the most expensive, by the way) is reassured by finding the best where she expects it to be. Our credibility would be harmed if we cheapened our image.
Divide and rule. I became convinced that strength had less to do with being a female or a male executive than with being an executive at heart. One had to be sure of herself- or atleast act as if she was. An executive had to subscribe to the divide and rule theory. For me, that meant I could divide authority and responsibility among the best staff I could find; but if they didn’t produce, it was time to rule… There always must be one person on top who must be the final authority,
Learn to say no. Saying yes all the time stems from a childish desire to please and be loved all the time. Executives must say no to inferior products and ideas, no to those who seem to be making a mistake.
Trust your instincts. I’ve discovered that pondering “facts” and other people’s judgements usually leads me down the wrong path. My first reaction is almost invariably the right one. My body, my mind, my heart, tells me yes or no, and I’ve learned to act on my visceral reaction.
Acknowledge your mistakes.
Write things down.
Hire the best people.
Break down barriers. Walls between people are not conducive for sales.
Give credit where credit is due.
Train the best sales force.
This was an important concept. Generosity is met with generosity. It’s a business tactic as well as a rule of human kindness.

Estée was robbed at gunpoint in her home:

“Where’s the good stuff?” The robbers asked Begum.

“In my mind,” Begum later recounted to me. I weighted the good stuff against my own weight and I weighed more. I gave them everything.

With a gun at my head, I weighted “good stuff”against my own weight and I , too, weighed more. If the valuables in my home had weighed 10,000 pounds, I would have weighted more.

I gave them everything.

“Perfume, is the unseen but unforgettable and ultimate fashion accessory. It heralds a woman’s arrival and prolongs her departure.” – Chanel

Demand the finest quality in product and performance. Tell your story with enthusiasm. Always look for things that should be changed. We learn too much, every day, to be satisfied with yesterday’s achievements.