estée lauder

What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

[4:52] My father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it.

[5:49] Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second.

[7:41] To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool.

[8:00] You should not worry about prestige. This is easy advice to give. It’s hard to follow.

[10:22] You have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible.

[12:18] Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail.

[16:46] How To Do What You Love by Paul Graham 

[16:34] What Doesn’t Seem Like Work by Paul Graham 

[17:16] If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for.

[17:42] Michael Jordan said what looked like hard work to others was play to him. Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) and Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)

[20:53] How Not to Die by Paul Graham 

[23:00] All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson (Founders #224)

[24:49] You have to assume that running a startup can be demoralizing. That is certainly true. I've been there, and that's why I've never done another startup.

[27:31] If a startup succeeds, you get millions of dollars, and you don't get that kind of money just by asking for it. You have to assume it takes some amount of pain.

[28:17] So I'll tell you now: bad shit is coming. It always is in a startup. The odds of getting from launch to liquidity without some kind of disaster happening are one in a thousand.

So don't get demoralized. When the disaster strikes, just say to yourself, ok, this was what Paul was talking about. What did he say to do? Oh, yeah. Don't give up.

[28:45] Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy by Paul Graham 

[30:23] If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders.

[31:15] If you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.

[34:10] The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill.

[35:43] Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham 

[35:43] I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful.

[37:20] If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there.

[37:40] The Anatomy of Determination by Paul Graham 

[37:45] David’s Notes: A Conversation with Paul Graham

[39:50] After a while determination starts to look like talent.

[42:12] Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age.

[43:21] One of the best ways to help a society generally is to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people together. (Founders Podcast Conference?)

[45:21] What Startups Are Really Like by Paul Graham 

[49:00] The Entire History of Silicon Valley by John Coogan

[49:50] Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)

[55:08] You need persistence because everything takes longer than you expect. A lot of people (founders) were surprised by that.

[57:18] Estee Lauder was a master at doing things that don’t scale. Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[58:45] What makes companies fail most of the time is poor execution by the founders. A lot of times founders are worried about competition. YC has founded 1900+ companies. 1 was killed by competitors. You have the same protection against competitors that light aircraft have against crashing into other light aircraft. Do you know what the protection is? Space is large.

[1:01:00] Paul on what he would do if he was strating a company today: 

If I were a 22 year starting a startup I would certainly apply to YC. Which is not that surprising, since it was designed to be what I wish I'd had when I did start one. But (assuming I got in) I would not get sucked into raising a huge amount on Demo Day.

I would raise maybe $500k, keep the company small for the first year, work closely with users to make something amazing, and otherwise stay off SV's radar.

Ideally I'd get to profitability on that initial $500k. Later I could raise more, if I felt like it. Or not. But it would be on my terms.

At every point in the company's growth, I'd keep the company as small as I could. I'd always want people to be surprised how few employees we had. Fewer employees = lower costs, and less need to turn into a manager.

When I say small, I mean small in employees, not revenues.

[1:05:07] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[1:07:00] A Word To The Resourceful by Paul Graham 

[1:08:07] We found the startups that did best were the ones with the sort of founders about whom we'd say "they can take care of themselves." The startups that do best are fire-and-forget in the sense that all you have to do is give them a lead, and they'll close it, whatever type of lead it is.

[1:09:00] Understanding all the implications of what someone tells you is a subset of resourcefulness. It's conversational resourcefulness.

[1:11:00] Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham 

[1:11:00] Startups take off because the founders make them take off.

[1:16:00] The question to ask about an early stage startup is not "is this company taking over the world?" but "how big could this company get if the founders did the right things?" And the right things often seem both laborious and inconsequential at the time.

[1:16:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[1:21:00] The world is complicated. It is noisy. We are not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us. —Steve Jobs

[1:22:00] Any strategy that omits the effort is suspect.

[1:23:00] The need to do something unscalably laborious to get started is so nearly universal that it might be a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas as scalars. Instead we should try thinking of them as pairs of what you're going to build, plus the unscalable thing(s) you're going to do initially to get the company going.

Now that there are two components you can try to be imaginative about the second as well as the first. Founders need to work hard in two dimensions.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

[3:11] His mind was never a captive of reality.

[5:16] A complete list of every Founders episode on Steve Jobs and the founders Steve studied: Steve Jobs’s Heroes

[7:15] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77)

[9:05] Steve Job’s Commencement Address

[9:40] Driven and curious, even when things were tough, he was a learning machine.

[10:20] He learned how to manage himself.

[12:45] Anything could be figured out and since anything could be figured out anything could be built.

[14:10] It was a calculation based on arrogance. — The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255)

[18:00] We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run.

[17:40] He was a free thinker whose ideas would often run against the conventional wisdom of any community in which he operated.

[19:55] He had no qualms about calling anyone up in search of information or help.

[20:40] I've never found anybody who didn't want to help me when I've asked them for help.

I've never found anyone who's said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked.

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask.

[21:50] First you believe. Then you work on getting other people to share your belief.

[24:55] All the podcasts on Edwin Land:

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)

Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40)

[25:00] My friend Frederick’s newsletter I was interviewed for

[30:20] He was an extraordinary speaker and he wielded that tool to great effect.

[31:00] Never underestimate the value of an ally. — Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[32:50] If you go to sleep on a win you’re going to wake up with a loss.

[33:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[34:20] Software development requires very little capital investment. It is basically intellectual capital. The main cost is the labor required to design and test it. There's no need for expensive factories. It can be replicated endlessly for practically nothing.

[38:10] He cared passionately and he never dialed it in.

[39:45] To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy (Founders #235)

[42:58] Time carries most of the weight.

[43:30] People that are learning machines and then refuse to quit are incredibly hard to beat. Steve jobs was a learning machine who refused to quit.

[44:17] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77)

[49:40] Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull

[50:30] There were times when the reactions against Steve baffled Steve.

I remember him sometimes saying to me: Why are they upset?

What that said to me was that he didn't intend to get that outcome. It was a lack of skill as opposed to meanness. A lack of skill of dealing with other people.

[55:50] Creative thinking, at its best, is chalk full of failures and dead ends.

[56:40] Successful people listen. Those that don’t listen don’t last long. —Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) 

[58:40] You can't go to the library and find a book titled The Business Model for Animation. The reason you can't is because there's only been one company Disney that's ever done it well, and they were not interested in telling the world how lucrative it was.

[1:01:20] The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans.

[1:02:25] The only purpose for me in building a company is so that the company can make products. One is a means to the other.

[1:04:00] Personal History by Katherine Graham (Founders #152)

[1:10:11] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

[1:11:12] What am I focusing on that sets me apart from my competitors?

[1:13:00] The channel? We lost $2 billion last year. Who gives a fuck about the channel?

[1:15:21] Time carries most of the weight. Stay in the game as long as possible.

[1:16:41] The information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether. This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

[1:56] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179)

[5:45] We just got after it and stayed after it.

[6:06] Foxes and Hedgehogs

[6:39] Hedgehogs may not be as clever as foxes but they obsessively measure and track everything about their business, and over time, they acquire deep, relevant knowledge and expertise. Their single minded approach may appear risky at times but they are conservative by nature. Hedgehogs don’t speculate or make foolish bets. If all their eggs are in that one proverbial basket, they follow Mark Twain’s advice – and watch that basket very carefully.

[7:17] The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way.

[7:28] Hedgehogs are the ones who build great, lasting companies. As entrepreneurs, they are the rarest of breeds – those who can start something anew, make it work, stick with it, and build something special, and ultimately, inspire others along the way, with their determination, dedication and commitment.

[8:49] At first, we amazed ourselves. And before too long, we amazed everybody else too.

[9:26] Think about how crazy this is. He died weeks after that writing this. His last days were spent categorizing and organizing his knowledge so future generations can benefit.

[12:32] Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger(Founders #90)

[12:56] "It's quite interesting to think about Walmart starting from a single store in Arkansas – against Sears, Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears? And he does it in his own lifetime – in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart – and he did it with more fanaticism. So he just blew right by them all. —Charlie Munger

[17:11] What motivates the man is the desire to absolutely be on the top of the heap.

[17:32] Practice your craft so much that you're the best in the world at it and the money will take care of itself.

[18:44] We exist to provide value to our customers.

[21:18] A Conversation with Paul Graham

[22:32] It never occurred to me that I might lose; to me, it was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[26:42] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey by William Rosenberg. (Founders #231)

[29:35] It didn’t take me long to start experimenting—that’s just the way I am and always have been.

[30:56] Do things that other people are not doing.

[33:13] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)

[33:41] I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of the biggest contributions to the later success of Wal Mart.

[34:10] Our money was made by controlling expenses. I gotta read that again because it's so important. Our money was made by controlling expenses.

[37:49] Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man (Founders #150)

[38:37] I’ve always thought of problems as challenges, and this one wasn’t any different. I didn’t dwell on my disappointment. The challenge at hand was simple enough to figure out: I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

[42:47] Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184)

[45:12] The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74)

[47:08] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price. (Founders #107)

[49:56] Sam had a really simple hypothesis for the first Wal Mart: We were trying to find out if customers in a town of 6,000 people would come to our kind of a barn and buy the same merchandise strictly because of price. The answer was yes.

[52:19] I have always been a Maverick who enjoys shaking things up and creating a little anarchy.

[54:23] In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables. —Charlie Munger

[55:02] He does something really smart here. And this is something I missed the first time I read the book. He finds a way to force himself to know the numbers for every single store.

[56:13] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110)

[58:11] Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)  I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. —Michael Jordan

[58:43] We paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to the way things were supposed to be done, you know, the way the rules of retail said it had to be done.

[1:03:15] Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217)

[1:04:00] One thing I never did—which I’m really proud of—was to push any of my kids too hard. I knew I was a fairly overactive fellow, and I didn’t expect them to try to be just like me.

[1:06:38] I was never in anything for the short haul.

[1:10:36] Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) Like so many NBA players, Drexler was operating mostly off his great store of talent, absent any serious attention to the important details of the game. Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

[1:11:56] And you can think about Sam constantly learning from everybody else, visiting stores —that is a form of practice. Every single craft has a form of practice. It just is not as obvious as it is in sports.

[1:13:26] He proceeds to extract every piece of information in your possession.

[1:15:37]  He has just been a master of taking the best of everything everybody else is doing and adapting it to his own needs.

[1:18:52] We were serious operators who were in it for the long haul, that we had a disciplined financial philosophy, and that we had growth on our minds.

[1:19:54] Most people seem surprised to learn that I've never done much investing in anything except Walmart.

[1:20:42] He's like I just figured out the Walmart's worked. And then all I did was focus on making more of them. You don't have to over-complicate it.

[1:23:04] If you ask me if I'm an organized person, I would say flat out, no, not at all. Being organized would really slow me down. (Optimize for flexibility)

[1:24:26] The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson (Founders #127): My view is different. My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important, and you devote all your time to those and forget everything else. If you try to do all thousand things, answer all thousand phone calls, you will dilute your efforts in those areas that are really essential

[1:26:15]  I think one of Sam's greatest strengths is that he is totally unpredictable. He is always his own person. He is totally independent in his thinking.

[1:26:45] If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. —Bruce Lee

[1:28:40] You can’t possibly know the TAM. You are in the middle of inventing the TAM.

[1:30:08] There is no speed limit by Derek Sivers

[1:31:54] Built From Scratch: How A Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion (Founders #45)

[1:41:35]  I like to keep everybody guessing. I don't want our competitors getting too comfortable with feeling that they can predict what we're going to do next.

[1:42:25] He ties that investment int technology with the compounding savings and over the long-term, he's going to destroy his competition just off this one metric alone.

[1:43:39] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192)

[1:47:56] Sam’s 10 Rules for Building A Business

[1:48:04] One thing I don’t even have on my list is “work hard.” If you don’t know that already, or you’re not willing to do it, you probably won’t be going far enough to need my list anyway.

[1:48:51] Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work.

[1:50:54] Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running—long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation’s largest retailer—we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.

----

Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

----

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading A Success Story by Estee Lauder.

----

Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. 

Get your tickets here! 

----

Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. 

---

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. [0:10]

I’ve always believed that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. I kept my eye on the target. I never allowed my eye to leave the target. I always believed that success comes from not letting your eyes stray from that target.  [1:10]

Beauty is an ancient industry: Women have always enhanced their looks. It has always been so. It will always be so. [4:18] 

Lessons from here mother: The secret is to imagine yourself as the most important person in the room. Imagine it vividly enough and you will become that person. [6:01] 

You could make a thing wonderful by enhancing its outward appearance. Little did I know I’d be doing the same thing, multiplied by a billionfold. [8:45]

Everything has to be sold aggressively. [9:05]

I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and sell it hard. [9:39] 

My drive and persistence were always there, and those are the qualities for building a successful business. [10:38] 

The moment she realizes she could make beauty her life’s work: This is the story of bewitchment. Uncle John [a skin specialist] had worlds to teach me. Do you know what it means for a young girl to suddenly have someone take her dreams seriously? Teach her secrets? I could think of nothing else. [12:09]

The humble beginning of the Estee Lauder empire: This was my first chance at a real business. I would have a small counter in a beauty salon. Whatever I sold would be mine to keep. No partners. I would risk the rent, but if it worked, I would start the business I always dreamed about. Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances. [15:30]

Sales technique of the century: Now the big secret. I would give the woman a sample of whatever she did not buy as a gift. I just knew, even though I had not yet named the technique, that gift with a purchase was very appealing. The idea was to convince a woman to try a product. She would be faithful forever.  [16:30]

I didn’t need bread to eat but I worked as though I did, for the pure love of the venture. For me, teaching about beauty was an emotional experience. [18:52]

I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream. [21:01] 

Despite all the nay sayers, there was never a single moment when I considered giving up. That was simply not a viable alternative. [22:12]

Word of mouth was what built the foundation of her business: Women were telling women. They were selling my cream before they even go to the salon. Tell-a-Woman was the word-of-mouth campaign that launched Estee Lauder Cosmetics. [22:41]

Great packaging does not copy or study. It invents. [24:50]

Sak’s Fifth Avenue placed an $800 order. This was her response: Breaking that first barrier was perhaps the single most exciting moment I have ever known. [26:16] 

“Missionaries make better products.” — Jeff Bezos:  I was a woman on a mission. I had to show as many women as I could reach how to stay beautiful. [28:07] 

The free sample sales technique she pioneered in the beauty industry: The gift to the customer —the free something that would sell everything else. You give people a product to try. If they like the quality, they buy it. They haven’t been lured in by an advertisement but convinced by the product itself. [29:10]

We took the money we planned to use on advertising and invested it instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products. [30:00] 

A great story about how Estee Lauder convinced more women to buy perfume. [32:59] 

A great story about how Estee Lauder expanded into Europe. [36:31] 

Be determined and sell!: It’s not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it. One woman with definite ideas, pride in her product, and a hands-on approach could lay the foundation for a strong business. [40:57] 

Our unique style has come from years of trial and error. Truths have emerged that have worked for us. Let me share them with you. [41:24] 

Keep an eye on the competition. This doesn’t mean copying them, as I’ve made clear. Being interested in other people’s ideas for the purpose of saying, “We can do it better,” is not copying. Innovation doesn’t mean inventing the wheel each time; innovation can mean a whole new way of looking at old things. [42:10] 

—

“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.