If you could take us on that journey.

e.l.f. was born to disrupt.

It's in our DNA, and that started 22 years ago.

When I say 22, most people are like, "What? I thought e.l.f.

was like 10 years old." e.l.f. is 22, and it was started by a father-son duo in Brooklyn, New York.

The origins were that the son was graduating from New York University, and the father wanted to find a business that they could get in together.

So they were white space entrepreneurs.

Mm-hmm.

How does your team plan for sharing that type of news with the world when you're so close to your community and you are sharing news that

may land in different ways? There is zero distance between the conversations we have in the boardroom, even with the C-suite, and the audience we serve.

So when we took the very difficult decision to raise our prices by a dollar to help cover the tariff, of course, it can't cover a 55% tariff that we got hit with.

we wanted to make sure that we went out to the community with total transparency so we actually put a campaign forward not only announcing the price increase which we didn't have to do most people actually don't do that they just increase the price the consumer gets to the counter and they're you know they check out like whoa this this looks higher than the last time I purchased.

And we don't operate that way.

We want to make sure that there's zero distance and we're always transparent.

So we put a campaign out to market explaining why we were doing what we were doing and when we were doing what we were doing so that they clearly understood that as of August 1st, the elf prices would be going up by a dollar.

So what really led to that decision to show up in those spaces?

And, you know, to gain, you've gotta be, you know, really, really aiming high.

Yeah.

And one of the things that people get stuck in is studying the competition.

And I just contextually gave you the figures.

If I studied the competition, I'd be signing up for 4% 10-year net sales CAGR.

I can't study the competition because we're in a league of our own now at the type of growth that we're able to deliver.

So one of the things that's really important is to recognize that your greatest competition is the greatest version of yourself.

How do you protect for that?

... and what's the one thing that people listening can do?

So you started by saying versus, and my philosophy is it's not versus, it is force multiplier.

And it starts with alignment between the agency and the client that you're going after a win-win, and I feel that way about a lot of things, in- including recruiting new employees to your company, hiring agency partners.

It should actually be treated the same way.

And when you bring in an agency, don't treat them like a service provider.

Treat them like a member of your team.

The more exposure they have to who you are, how you operate, what your team is, what you're up to, what is the context of the things that you're doing in the broader world outside of just the assignment that they're given, then you are in fact setting them up for success.

But that, but yeah, getting everyone in early at the problem stage, I think, was a huge difference in certainly in that example.

And I often find looking outside can be the best place to look for inspiration.

Well, I think in order for an organization to grow, for a brand to grow, the people need to grow.

And how do the people grow? It's by exposing themselves to different stimuli.

And when I think about myself as being a beauty executive for almost 30 years now, Whenever anybody asks me what inspiration I take from within our industry, I actually say none.

I spend almost all of my time looking outside of our industry.

So similar to you and how you're very inspired by Tony's Chocolony and I will now spend time with it as well because it's a pretty incredible story and I'm very inspired by stories.

I take inspiration from so many other brands.

Just by going to New York for one week, I could come up with multiple ideas for new brands.

What are some of the things that people might not realise about doing the job you do?

Well, it's funny because I think we've somehow created a world where people think everything is one-sided, meaning it has to be great and it can only be great versus it can be spectacular and it can be filled with sacrifice and both can be true.

So I think our jobs are a position of privilege because we get to go to incredible places all around the world, meet exceptional people, smell new smells, touch new feelings, taste new flavors, and have these incredible conversations with brilliant minds.

And at the same time, you're doing a lot of that away from home.

So the sacrifices that you make are sleeping on airplanes and rolling off an airplane at eight o'clock in the morning, taking a shower and going straight to work.

How many times do you wake up and wonder, where am I? What? What time is it? What city am I in? And there is a tax on the body.

So there's a physical tax on high levels of travel.

And I personally find that that's the thing that I... have to try and manage is how do you maintain that kind of energy level throughout all the travel?

Yes, you do.

So before you break the rules, let's understand what the rules are first, right? Because I can see you being a rule breaker and I am as well.

And you need to know what game you're playing before you start breaking the rules.

I'll give you maybe a story of how not to get fired that goes back into the early days of my career.

It was my... third job and I was young in my journey and I had been brought there from somebody from my first job and this was just a very exciting moment where I got the phone call from somebody I had worked for in the past who wanted to take me along on this exciting journey and it was everything lined up to be this extraordinary moment for me to build my career, build a company and doing it with incredible people.

And I start the job and I cannot get along with my boss.

And it was one of those moments where I would go home every day, reflect on the day, and none of the days were good days.

And that is a unique and challenging environment that very few people can cope with.

So where did that idea, is that something you came up with or is this kind of a thing? Absolutely.

Actually, as we're sitting here in New York directly across the street from the Fashion Institute of Technology where I got my master's, I do have to give credit to the professor that taught us as part of our master program about having a personal board of directors.

One of the people on my personal board of directors was from that cohort.

And it is life changing.

And when you think about what needs to be true for you to be successful, and I would encourage everybody to do that, really write down the thematics of along your journey, what were the turning points? What were the key moments? that actually propelled you to the next dimension.

And take note of them because you can make them happen again if you know what they are.

And when you think about people, which I would say are the most important part of the journey, I would put them in three different layers.

But I just thought, you know, I've ended up building a relationship with a, you know, world renowned author and expert on this particular topic, simply because I felt vulnerable and was out of my depth and wanted to help.

Was that a conscious thing that you decided to do?

It was a very conscious thing.

When I started the company almost seven years ago now, there wasn't a codified ethos.

There was a set of principles, practices, beliefs.

It wasn't codified.

And what I wanted to do was take all the magic I was seeing around me and work together with a team that could put that into words that could become a shared language that could be repeatable, that could be a magnetic attraction.

For others, whether it's shoppers or employees or partners that we were going to force multiply with.

Honestly, it just completely changed the relationship I had with the team at the time.

ever relaunch of this brand and put everything i've got into it so yeah if i get fired when i get fired it will not be down to marketing competence and i remember i remember then setting group kpis for everybody and being very transparent about it and literally telling everyone right we're going to do this by then i'm going to do that and that and do we all agree that this is the way out of this crisis yes we do okay right so that by the end of it if you fire me you're not firing me for performance you have to find another reason

Well, part of creating the cultural conditions necessary for innovation of any type to thrive is mutual accountability.

If you're working in a company, you are by definition on a team.

If you're an entrepreneur by yourself in your closet, in your home office, it's all on you.

There's one person to blame it yourself, right? If you're in a company, by definition, you're part of a team.

And if an organization doesn't have mutual accountability, and if it starts to get into blame, John, this is your fault, then people take that around them and then they become afraid to make a mistake.

And then you start to see the decay set in or the rust set in.

So I have

I've done that.

So same exact thing.

Only what we do is we put primer on our face to create a smooth canvas before we put the makeup on.

So same exact concept.

So the beauty of primers is a primer can be worn alone.

It gives you a beautiful, smooth finish.

It may lessen the appearance of pores.

Ooh.

But there's something about the world is complex, isn't it? But actually with poetry, you somehow distill it and you kind of take the mist away and then suddenly you see something clearly that maybe you haven't seen before.

So there's a line that you're going to love.

That's one of our affirmations.

We have a brand called Key Soul Care that we created with Alicia Keys.

Talk about a poet.

And the affirmation on one of our products is you are layered, complex, and divine.

Complex often takes people to a negative.

my nomadic.

And it's just a reframing, isn't it?

One of the ways that, uh, I think about that, and I actually learned this from one of the TED c- coaches.

I had a great experience at a summit where they brought in a TED coach for CMOs, and she boiled it down to ABC.

And I have never forgotten that.

I've used it.

I've taught it to everybody on my team.

ABC is audience before content.

... and then turn it into something surprising.

So building that is obviously going to be hugely important to shareholders, to employees, to everyone.

Yeah.

And it's amazing when you think about the number of people you encounter and what that means to how someone's going to talk about your brand.

So, for example, I have a corporate credit card, so it says Elf on it.

So when I'm checking into a hotel or any time I take my card out, somebody, oh, you work for Elf.

Now think about that interaction and what that's going to leave behind for them.

If this is a positive interaction, if they like me, if we have a good moment together, if I leave a positive impression, that's the impression they have about the elf brand.

volumes, doesn't it? Because we know that our brand is so important to us that we know that that's got to be reflected in the people we hire.

There we are

... and to make sure that we can run the math through the P&L and get to the place that we wanna be going and reach the goalpost, right? So one of the things that I hear a lot of CMOs especially complaining about is nobody understands them.

We hear this all the time.

Scott Galloway talks about CMOs have a branding problem.

I actually don't think that's the problem.

I think the problem is most functions are black and white.

You know exactly what this function is doing.

You know?

and i was completely you know incapable of doing you know learning anything so i became an expert on how you make a juice yeah in the uk but actually that set us up for world success

Yeah, I think most people don't recognize the complexity of a supply chain.

And we have a, you were talking earlier about your C-suite teaching classes, if you will.

We did for our 20th anniversary of ELF, we took our entire employee base offsite for a big company-wide celebration.

And one of the things we did was have each person teach a class.

So our CFO taught a class called What the ELF is EBITDA.

Our chief people officer did getting cozy with equity because every elf is a shareholder and the lines were out the door to get into these classes.

And it was

That's worrying.

Well, I think the part we're not talking about is culture.

And to your point, a lot of, and yours also, a lot of shitty work gets done and goes to market and it's pretty mediocre and people scroll by it and that's a giant waste of money.

Completely agree and most of what I see is a giant waste of money.

I don't know where the fear is happening, but companies have to ask themselves what is happening in their culture that is making the output shitty work.

We don't let shitty work out of the door.

It is not how we operate.

And instead of fighting that fight, we've kind of bowed down to the temple of... attribution and accountability when we should have been saying you can't use that infantile maths to measure and judge and direct an uncertain process does that seem fair

So those are just the two things I wanted to point out.

We were talking about Scott Galloway earlier.

I often pick up what he puts down, and I really appreciated this line, which I think is germane to this topic.

He said, a brand is unearned margin because of soft power.

Soft power is feeling good about the brand, empathy, goodwill.

So to Lisa's point, that doesn't just come from product.

And what I would argue is the world does not need another brand.

And has to be connected to the business, right? The products and services you sell.

That was amazing.

But I think what we learned from that is...

most people didn't know.

So to your point, do they think about it? Do they understand? And one of our goals with boards of directors is almost like you wouldn't buy a cereal without turning it over on its side and looking at the ingredient label.

You should not be buying a product without asking questions about who are the people behind this product? What are their values? And what I love about Gen Z and even Gen Alpha is they are asking those questions.

They are voting with their wallet.

They do want to know.

elf car, right?