March 27, 2025 • 34 mins
When he was 14, Tarang Amin’s family sold their home and bought a motel. They fixed it up and expanded their business, buying one motel after another. Since those days, Tarang’s gotten an MBA, built an impressive resume at Procter & Gamble, Clorox, and Schiff Nutrition, and currently serves as the Chairman of the Board and CEO of e.l.f. Beauty. Tarang still credits his days at the family motels for his achievements in the business world. Tarang shares stories about the incredible growth he’s built for brands across the board, even after hitting walls or stepping into unexpected roles. Underlying his success are core values and strategies like incentivizing employees with ownership opportunities, constantly learning from mistakes, and creating a culture of teamwork and innovation.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm constantly making a six. You're constantly learning, learning on
these small failures so it avoids the big, big.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Big miss.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And so for me, the way I approach risk is
encourage an organization to embrace innovation, to embrace change, constantly
try things, and actually make it okay to fail, Actually
celebrate those failures, actually talk about those things of what
we learned and what we're going to go do about it.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
from the Frontiers and Marketing. On this episode, we're going
deep with someone who has the Midas touch. These transformed brands,
one after the other and company after company, moving from
marketer to CEO. He's created enormous shareholder returns and we're
going to dig into the hows today with Terang Amin,
(01:02):
Chairman of the board and CEO at ELF Beauty. Terang
was born in Kenya moved to the US as a child.
Growing up, he helped his dad run the family owned
hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, and went on to Duke University
for undergrad and his MBA. Like many great execs, His
training ground was PNG, and he spent time running brands
(01:23):
for Pong and others before rising to his first CEO
job in twenty eleven. He's a purpose driven, passionate leader
who has been driving performance for over thirty years. He's
committed to diversity and also to disruption and credits Boat
for his remarkable success and to put that in perspective,
he has grown the Elf Beauty business five x since
(01:44):
arriving as CEO. Terang, Welcome, Well, thank you for having me.
I want to dig into your story and it's fascinating story,
but first I want to do you in sixty seconds.
You ready sounds great? Do you prefer cats or dogs? Dogs? Early?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Ryme, nightdowl early riser? West coast or East coast, West coast,
city or country city, beach or mountains, beach, coffee or tea, tea,
books or movies, movies, cook or eat out, cook, call
or text call. Work life balance or work life integration.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Integration. Okay, it's about to get harder. All time favorite
music artist, you two, favorite TV show Seinfeld, smartest person
you know, Fred Cohen, childhood hero Mohamma Gandhi. Favorite sport
to watch Basketball, Favorite movie shash Ank Redemption, most important
(02:44):
piece of advice you ever got, lean in, favorite city,
San Francisco, favorite place to visit Africa, and the final one,
secret talent gardening. Okay, great, let's jump in now. Know
this is going to be a surprise, But you're actually
not the first guest who grew up in their family motel.
(03:05):
Shaji Vishram, the founder of Happy Baby, the organic baby
food company, grew up in the family motel and Alabama
Rooms one twenty three, and like you, she said, it
taught her so much about life and business. So I
am fascinated by this story. So can you paint the
picture of that experience for you? Growing up in a motel,
(03:28):
working all the time with your family, That was.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
A pretty formative experience for me. So when I was fourteen,
we sold our house, took every penny we had, and
we bought our first hotel on Route one in Alexandria, Virginia.
We moved right into the manager's apartment, and our business
model as a family was we'd find these distressed properties,
we'd fix them up. We're good operators, and we kept
building from there. You did everything. If the maze didn't
(03:51):
show up, you made the rooms you rented, the rooms
you renovated. It was such an important experience for me.
Probably the most important is how you treat people. Because
there were small motels or more on the budget side,
we didn't have like high wages or other things, so
it really came down to how did you motivate people
who were oftentimes hourly and how did you incent kind
(04:12):
of our managers over time in terms of you know,
we had a model that if they hit certain criteria,
we'd help finance their own property. So it was a
great leg up and a way for them to really
change their families' lives as well. I had a pretty
classical career after that and large consumer goods, but I
tell people everything I know about cash flow, economic profit,
(04:34):
how you treat people really came from building our motel
business up with my dad, and I did that from
fourteen to about my mid twenties. Many many years later,
I still pull from those experiences. My gosh, we could
probably go on the entire podcast for everything I learned
to the motels.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
In the nineteen nineties, I was on the board of
a company called HFS which had a number of brands
for motels, and I was always struck with that over
representation in the ownership families. Why is that?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
You know, as you mentioned in your opening, we were
immigrants from East Africa, and there are a number of immigrants,
particularly when Idiamine came to power in Uganda and kicked
all the Indians out, Kenya, other countries that immigrated to
the US, and a lot of times where they kind
of left behind whatever their original profession was or their
business people. The motels were actually a really good model
(05:24):
because with a limited amount of capital you could get alone.
You could then actually not only live there, but earn
a living and be able to go from there. So
we're in India. Our ethnicities Gadratis, and a lot of
Gadratis got into the motel business. I think it's still
a huge proportion of the motels in the US are
owned by Gadratis. And like any immigrant family, immigrant community,
(05:48):
when someone gets into it, others learn that there's something
there and so I'm not unique in having that experience.
There are number of Ztratis in the US that also
had their start in these motels.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Did you ever think about staying in the business, You know, I.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Didn't and my parents didn't want me to either. There
was a real focus, particularly drive the community on education,
and so my parents were very set and I was
very set on going to university, going to grad school,
figuring out what I really wanted to do. And so
I would say it never was an aspiration as much
(06:24):
as I learned from it, I was definitely interested in
wanting to explore the world and do different things.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
You were obviously a good student. You went off to
Duke for undergrad and grad school too, and you have
an interesting story when you applied to the graduate School
of Business when you were still an undergrad and they
told you you had no business experience.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
How did you use that motel experience to become that
objection the dean of admissions. Since I was an undergrad
and done a lot of leadership things at Duke, you know,
you told me like, no, we don't accept people straight
out of undergrad. You need to go work. I basically,
I think, in about twenty minutes, described what my work
experience was in the motels, and it must have been
persuasive enough for him to let me in a great story.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
A stunning number of marketing focused CEOs got their startup PNG.
Actually surprising number of people that are on math and
magic got their startup P ANDNG. Why is that such
a fertile ground.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I actually went to p ANDNG almost by accident. I
did my undergraduate major in international policy. I thought I
was going to go do my MBA, to go work
at the World Bank, and then my name showed up
on some close lists for Proker and Gamble. To be
honest with you, I didn't even know what it was,
but what intrigued me about it was this notion that
in your mid twenties you could go run a brand,
(07:40):
and that really appealed to me of the ability to
be able to really get into every aspect of the business,
the whole aspect of consumers and understanding them, being able
to translate insights into action, and so I thought it
was a really great experience for getting a great overview
of almost every functional area moving a business forward, what
(08:02):
the brand stood for, and so I really loved my
time at PNG. It definitely was a great training ground,
as many others have experienced.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
One of your first big successes, I guess was a
p ANDNG when you were part of the team that
relaunched Panteen, taking it from a I think the numbers
are right. Of fifty million dollar haircare brand to a
two billion dollar global market leader. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
That was a really formative experience because I spent eight
years on Canteen.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It was my beauty.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I did almost every possible role in that business. Panteen
it existed for fifty years. It was almost on its
last legs. P ANDNG had gotten it through the Richardson
Vicks acquisition in the mid eighties, and by the time
I got on in nineteen ninety one, it still only
had fifty million dollars of sales, and there was one
failed relaunch after another. But the core of the brand
(08:52):
was this intersection between health and beauty, and I remember
we had a line we came out of hair so
healthy it shines, And like I think many great businesses,
it was the timing of a lot of things coming
together at the same time. These incredible flowing hair shots.
We put our two and one technology, put a conditioner
(09:13):
on it, did a lot of fundamentals, and it just
took off in the early nineties.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Long straight hair is in fashion.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But the best part of the Canteen story I tell
people all the time is we probably hit a wall
at least four times on that business where you would
grow really fast and the kind of plateau out and
the growing fast and platau out is that ability of
discovering what was aspirational yet achievable for consumers and how
we continue to pivot that brand. But it was a
(09:41):
great experience, including help in take it global.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
You know, it's an interesting point you mean about hitting
sort of the plateau, and I think all of us
have built products. You know, you go grow, grow, grow,
and then it slows down. How did you hit those?
It's interesting to me because very few people get over those.
That sort of is now the new high. Can you
give me an example of a couple and just tell
us how you got over it?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I mean, heck, I'll even give you an example. In
my current role at elf Beauty, very fast growing brand
in twenty eighteen, we hit a wall and we couldn't
figure out it. First, We're like, well is that our
value equation? It's something wrong with the product. And what
we realized is a bunch of mega influencer brands came
into our space, the Kylie Jenner's, the Fentees, the Buddha Beautyes,
(10:27):
And at first I thought our value proposition would insulate us,
but we found that no, they were taking all the
attention for consumers, and we weren't spending enough on the brand.
So I think the most important thing is to step
back and really get into where did we go wrong?
And it starts first and foremost with myself. I remember
get in front of our leadership team and saying, these
(10:47):
are my beliefs, and let me tell you where we
went wrong on each of these areas. We used to
brag that our value was so great we didn't have
to spend money on marketing, and I was dead wrong
on that. We were getting lost in all the noise
we'd gotten into retail stores. Yet many of those retail
stores were in malls that would never see a better day.
And then we basically got distracted. And so I think
(11:09):
the first thing was really I always tell people we
can face any reality, you just got to know what
the reality is. So I think the first step is
really getting a better understanding of what's what are the
drivers or what's not working, and then making bold moves.
I remember it was painful, but back in twenty nineteen,
on the same day we shut down all of our
retail stores we sent We had twenty six stores, spent
(11:31):
twenty six leaders to every store to let people know
what was going on and why we paid more than
market for severance. But it was still painful letting two
hundred associates go. But then we took the sixteen million
dollars or spending those stores, and we doubled down on
our digital business and we saw almost immediate results.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
So I would say two things.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
One, understand what the reality is, and then make sure
you're taking decisive action and not just wishing that things
will get better.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You think it's hard, but I see this in business,
and I'm seeing it watching others, certainly seeing it with myself.
Hard for people to sort of own up to it's
not working, we've got a problem.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, I think there's a natural human tendency to wish
for that it's going to get better. I feel like
that's an important role for a leader because others see it.
People in your organization will know when something's not working,
and they want leaders who own up to it. That
basically say hey guys, this isn't great. Let me tell
you where I believe I went wrong, let me tell
(12:32):
you what I'm doing about it, and it then role
models others to be able to step up and say, Okay,
there's nothing wrong with saying where have we failed and
what do we have to do about it?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
And I think it brings the team together. I'm going
to go back a little bit. You went on to
some big successes at Clorox after P and G, and
you got your first CEO shot. How did you make
the jump to CEO? You were obviously doing great with
the brands, great marketer, et cetera. But that's a big
jump to CEO.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think one of the things that really helped me
throughout my career is I started in marketing and then
I went over to more of a general managed role
than I went back deeper into marketing than before my
first CEO role. I was a general manager over three
of the divisions at Clorox, So I had a good
combination of going deep in a particular area and then
going broad and learning the other functional areas. And so
(13:23):
I felt by the time I was GM of Clorox
businesses Kingsford Charcoal, Hitting Valley Ranch dressings, a fresh step
in litter. They were pretty autonomous. They had their own
supply chain, they had their own way of kind of distribution,
and so I felt like it was a good training
ground for me to really make sure I was adept
(13:44):
at the different functional areas, but more importantly, continue to
hone my leadership skills. And so when my first CEO
opportunity came up, it was a small company called Shift Nutrition,
it was a publicly traded company, private equity backed, I
felt well prepared. I knew the areas that I could go,
and particularly in terms of like how we build the team.
(14:04):
My professional background is I'm absolutely passionate about building brands.
The best way in how you build brands is you
lead the innovation in the category. But what I love
doing the most is assembling these high performance teams. I
always bragged that in thirty four years of being in
the consumer space, I've never had a business we haven't
grown multiples of the category. And I always attributed that
back to the team and the culture that we create,
(14:26):
and so that gave me a lot of confidence to
jump in and take my first ro.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I'll brag on you for a second here. You grew
that enterprise value from one hundred and ninety million to
one point five billion in just a couple of years.
So obviously got a big success there, but you moved into,
as you said, a public company. You know, part of
the CEO job is running the business. The other parts
dealing with shareholders A doubt in your background, you've had
a lot of training on dealing with the investors. How
(14:54):
did you learn that side of the business.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, it definitely was a pretty steep learning curve. I
remember my first earnings call it shift nutrition. I said something.
I had gotten a stat from one of our team
members and it was wrong, and I had to issue
I think, an okay on what I said wrong. But
there's no hesitancy in terms of being transparent of like,
you know that was the wrong numbers. I just told
(15:16):
you here's what it is. So I would say, you know,
from that rough start, the thing that's helped me the
most is I love being a CEO of a public company.
A lot of people don't, but I love it because
there's one hundred percent transparency. The internal story and the
external story have to be the same one, and I
think that interaction with investors and others makes you sharper
(15:39):
in terms of what are people getting, what are people
not getting? What is that narrative? I'd say The second
thing that's been most important is some people spend too
much time on the public company thing and managing investor relations.
I have always had the discipline of I will never
let a quarter get in the way of our long
term focus and strategy, and then also constrain the time
(16:05):
where you know you can take a life of its own.
I give investor relations two days a quarter, one day
in prepping for what the earnings release and the narrative
and talking with investors, and then maybe a second day
to do a conference or some investor relations.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I feel some.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Of my peers as CEO spend in an order amount
of time on that part of the business, and I
think if you're spending too much time on that part,
it's getting in the way of where you really need
to focus on, which is the team and your strategy.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
More of Math and Magic right after this quick break,
welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from
my conversations with terrag Amm. We had a real success
and then you made them move to ELF. Why did
(16:58):
you make the move?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
We had a great run at Shift. We ended up
selling the company to Recabin Kyser. I then took a
few months off and I looked at a lot of
different businesses, and I'll tell you my path to ELF
was a series of fortunate accidents. I was asked to
take a meeting to see this private company that was
going to be for sale, and at first I said, no,
(17:20):
I'm not interested in color cosmetics. There are too many brands,
too low barriers of entry. It really wasn't interested in
the category. But I also have an adage that says
never hurts to have a conversation, So under that rule,
I said all right, I'll take the meeting and instantly
fell in love with the business. Actually, today's my eleventh
anniversary of bing Ceol.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Congratulations, thank you, so.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
A little bit over eleven years ago I took that
first meeting and at that time the company was already
ten years old. And what I loved about the story
was the company was founded by a father and son entrepreneurs.
So I tend to be attractive to other entrepreneurs and founders,
and I loved their story. Alan Shama, the father, wanted
(18:04):
to go into business with his son Joey. They started
studying what categories could they disrupt, and they couldn't figure
out why did people charge so much? Money in cosmetics.
They had a lot of friends that were doing business
with the Dollar Channel, Dollar General Family Dollar, and so
they said, what could we do that we could sell
for a dollar? And Alan will tell me many times trying,
(18:24):
I don't know as many things as you do, but
I know how to buy a shirt for two dollars
and sell it for four. And that novice approach. They
completely turned cosmetics upside down because their original business model
was if the Dollar Channel was the retailer for a dollar,
they're going to buy it for me each piece for
fifty cents. I'm going to have to figure out how
(18:45):
to make it for thirty five cents. And they figured
it out. Everyone thought they were crazy at the time,
like you couldn't sell cosmetics for a dollar. And of course,
what I love about many entrepreneurs stories is you always
have to pivot. They then went to the Dollar Channel.
A Dollar Channel said no, we're not in interested, and
they're like, what wait, we put all this effort in,
what do you mean you're not interested? And Joey meanwhile
(19:06):
had gotten one of their eyeliner pencils to an editor
at Glamour and he said, oh my gosh, I can't
believe this is a dollar. I would love to write
about it, but you have to be in distribution. She's like,
you know, even if you had a website. And so
in two thousand and four, predating the iPhone, they started
a website called islipspace dot com selling cosmetics over the
(19:27):
internet for one dollar. Like I said, everyone thought they
were crazy. You couldn't sell cosmetics for a dollar. You
certainly could make money over the internet at a buck each,
but they figured it out. So that initial story of
how disruptive they were really appealed to me. I love
the digitally native roots, I love the value orientation. But
then what I saw was real potential in terms of
(19:48):
what we could do. They had just gotten into target.
They were highly productive in target, but they weren't in
distribution anywhere else. And so I love the story so
much I decided to jump in and co invest with
the private equity company and we bought the company back
in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Wow. Well, just I'm just going to put some context
for everyone listening today is you have taken ELF from
two hundred million in revenue over a billion, and your
stock has gone from seventeen dollars to two hundred dollars,
five x revenue growth, ten x stock growth. Pretty remarkable
performance coming out of that, and I want to dig
a little more into it, and I'll come to it,
(20:23):
but I want to sort of ask you a little bit,
because it keeps coming up here is your career is
filled with risky decisions. How do you think about risk?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It was funny my first CEO role the pe firm
that hired me. I remember it was the last dinner
where whether I was going to get the job or not.
They basically were like, oh, we looked at your background
and we don't like that you haven't had any big
public failures.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
And at first I was a little confused.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I was like what, and they're like, yeah, I know,
you've had a lot of success, and we like our
CEOs to have some big stumble. We feel it makes
some hungrier for what we do. I asked them, I said, okay,
do you mean to give you the flippant answer or
the real answer? They said, well, now that you say that,
do both, and I saorry the flippant answers don't make
me apologize for not being a loser, and they loved it.
(21:10):
I feel like I had the job right then, And
I said, but if you want the real answer, if
you ask me what mistakes I've made, I would respond,
since this morning, I'm constantly making a six. You're constantly learning.
So what ends up happening is you're learning on these
small failures, so it avoids the big, big.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Big miss.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
And so for me, the way I approach risk is
encourage an organization to embrace innovation, to embrace change, constantly
try things, and actually make it okay to fail, actually
celebrate those failures, actually talk about those things of what
we learned and what we're going to go do about it.
And so I think some people, when it comes to risk,
(21:54):
are trying to mitigate every possible thing that can go wrong.
And like I said, I think that's a fallacy. I
think really paying attention and focusing on what could really
send us sideways. Let's focus on those few things. But otherwise,
let's encourage people to keep moving forward, keep trying things,
and learn from them so we can continue to innovate.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
That's great advice and a great perspective. I've always loved
the folks who say success and failure are the same thing.
They're stepping stones. One you learn more from us, right,
which is the failure. It seems like a very big
part of who you are as CEO is your commitment
to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it begins at the top.
(22:38):
Can you talk a little bit about that commitment to
diversity and how it helps your company and your business
and how purpose driven separates you from others.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
It starts first with when we bought the company, this
intention of we want to reflect the community we serve.
So I'm really proud from our employee base. Our employee
base is seventy four percent women, and I think almost
seventy five percent gen Z and millennial forty four percent diverse.
We're very intentional of like, let's make sure we're reflecting
(23:10):
the people that we're serving. There was no DEI program
of quotas. There was just this intention of let's be
crystal clear of who are we serving, who's our community,
and how do we have people that reflected. It's one
of our biggest competitive advantages because we don't have to
do focus groups, we don't have to go do a
bunch of research. Our employees are the people that we're serving.
(23:31):
They have incredible insights and incredible knowledge and ability to
move forward, but we didn't want it to stop with
our employees. I remember when we went were decided to
go public. You know, I want to have a board
that also reflects the people that we're serving and more importantly,
has real diversity of thought that can really push our thinking.
(23:52):
My view of the board is, not only do they
responsibility shareholders, but it's a total waste of time if
you're not getting the smartest people you know, with very
different backgrounds helping push management teams on things that we're
not seeing. And so our stats on our board standpoint
is I think we're one of only two companies now
out of forty one hundred that has a board that's
(24:12):
seventy eight percent women and over forty four percent diverse.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
And it's more than the stats.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It's the different experience that say bring, the different thought
processes that really just help me and the team.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Another big part of what you do is as a disruptor.
Clearly it's part of your culture. How have you built
that into the culture and how have you harnessed it
for growth?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I think the spirit of disruption for us has been
there from the very beginning, and I think, like many
digitally native businesses. There is definitely a culture of testing
and learning. Let's go try things, let's put it online,
see what happens, and let's get those signals from our
community and consumers what they respond to. But I think
the other thing is the team, And importantly it's not
(24:57):
just the team composition, but the culture put them in.
Where a culture of high performance teamwork, where you building
passion relationships, You're giving each other feedback, you have a
lot of mutual accountability, makes it a safe place to
disrupt and try things. And then then I think once
you start disrupting, you continue to disrupt because one leads
(25:19):
to the other and that becomes the norm.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
One of the things we do to be able to
encourage that as well is all the way to our
compensation system. It was very important to me, almost going
back to my motality is I saw the power of
owning something. So I insisted both at SHIFT and ELF,
every employee has to be a shareholder. It was a
big fight. When I remember I first got to SHIFT,
They're like, you know the private equity was like, no,
(25:43):
that's not our model. We only give equity to the
top team. And I'm like, well, well give me performance
incentives from my equity, so we can give equity to everyone.
And I saw the power of that at SHIFTS, so
it wasn't even a debate at ELF. I think we're
one of the few companies in our space that gives
meaningful equity to every single employee every year. So it
gets to that ownership, that level that I talk about
(26:05):
where we're in it together.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I think sin's our IPO.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We've given if you exclude the exec team, one hundred
and eighty million dollars of equity in the stock that's
gone up at least sevenfold, and so meaningful wealth creation
for our team. And I'm very explicit about that because
if people are owners, they just have much more skin
in the game, Like we're all owners, let's keep moving forward,
let's keep trying things. I think then builds upon itself
(26:29):
in that culture.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
On a personal level, how do you think about work
and your family and personal life. I can imagine growing
up running the motel it was sort of one and
the same. How do you think about it now?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
That's been very much part of my whole life. It
has been one and the same. When you're running a
motel business, it's a twenty four to seven business, you're
with your family.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
It's all together.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
And I think for me, a lot of people talk
about work life balance. For me, they're one and the same.
My personal life, my work life, they are so intertwined.
So it's very much a family affair. One of the
things my wife and I love doing is we do
these this series called Afternoon with the Means, where we'll
(27:13):
invite our key leaders and their spouses or partners to
our house for an afternoon as a way of thanking
them for what they're doing, the way of getting to
know them better. I love what I do at work,
I love my personal life, and I love that they're
both together.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Let's jump to some quick topics brand building. How do
you think about brands? How do you build them?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I feel brands sort of living, breathing things and that
constantly evolve and need to be nurtured. And so I
think of a brand of what is something represent in
a consumer's mind and what does it stand for, well
beyond any functional attributes or benefits and so, and I
love over my career being able to see kind of
(27:57):
how brands grow, how they evolve that they stand for.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Let's go to some advice. If someone wants to succeed
running a company, what's the most important advice you could
give them?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I would say the most important advice is work on
your peer to peer relationships. A lot of people spend
too little time understanding other functional areas, understanding what makes
people tick, how you work together, and most importantly, giving
that feedback, because I think where people often fail is
(28:31):
they never knew what hit them or detracted from them.
And so being able to really make sure that you
develop that way of listening really well and providing feedback
I think are probably two of the most important skills
in running anything.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You've had a spectacular career and you've made some great choices.
How do you know it's time to change jobs? An
advice there, I would say, you got to love what
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I have one of my eighty twenty rules is eighty
percent of what you work on, you got to love
twenty percents. You know the nonsense we all have to
deal with. Whenever they gets out of whack, then you've
got to you almost got to do a time out
and say, okay, we got to renegotiate what's going on here.
I've got to change something and so for me, unless
you have true passion of what you're doing, you're probably
(29:18):
not doing the right thing. And so I would say
making sure you're taking those moments of introspection of am
I truly happy? Am I loving what I'm doing? Am
I actually good at what I'm doing? And how do
I get better? And if you don't have that fundamental
passion and curiosity, then I'd say it's probably time to
do something different.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
College. Does everybody need to go to college?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
No? I don't even know where what schools most of
the people I work with went to. It's about curiosity,
learning and wanting to get better and never bought into
yet to be credentialed in a certain way to be
effective in life. I love my college experience. It was
just a great platform to continue to learn. But I'd
say one of the other's secrets of being successful is
(30:05):
never feel like you know anything, always being curious, always
asking questions, always wanting to get better, always surrounding yourself
with great people. That is so much more important than
any particular credential or environment. You know.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
It's interesting we hear the word curiosity a lot, and
talking to other leaders, it's actually part of our company's
values is curiosity probably one of the most important things.
It's interesting to hear you define that as sort of
this important thing just for life and career. Final advice,
if you could go back in time and give some
advice to your twenty one year old self, what would
(30:39):
that advice be.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
That advice would be embrace what you think is risky
or what you're worried about. I mean, I got married
at a pretty young age. I was the only kind
of breadwinner, and I was very happy at PNG. But
there's an entire revolution happening on the internet, and I
was a little risk verse or reluctant to kind of say, hey,
(31:02):
I should just take the leap when things are going
well to go pursue something that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
And I'd say so.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
My biggest advice is the advice somebody once gave me,
which is lean in, say yes, try something different, and
don't be so worried about what if it doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
We end each episode of Math and Magic with a
shout out to those who've influenced us the most. From
two sides, the analytical side. Some people call them quants,
some people call them data people. Some people say in
pattern recognition, people, etc. But the math side and the
other person we want to give a shout out to
is that sort of creative genius, the promotional, the art,
(31:41):
the magic. Who are your two?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
So on the math side, I would say Jensen. Want
just love his story and his vision, but more importantly
than vision and perseverance is ability to get that done
and the progress and videos made. It's just been incredible,
very in.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
All of that on the magic side.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
On the magic side, I would say Mike Cesario, the
founder and CEO of Liquid Death. I just love that
he made a can of water an object of desire
turned it into the art of entertainment. I think that's magic.
I also love the fact that they start with a
very simple question, which is, what's the dumbest thing we
can do?
Speaker 3 (32:20):
You know, dumbest thing.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
You can do is take a can of water and
make it something that's cool. And then they're constantly I
feel like this ability of normalizing the bizarre. I just
feel like it's quite magical what he and his team
are doing.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Terang, what an unusual and inspiring story you have, but
personally and professionally and what unique and wildly successful company
you've had huge congrats thanks for sharing your insights. Here
are a few things I picked up from my conversation
with Terang. One, Transparency is a superpower. One of the
reasons Durang loves running a public company is because it
(32:56):
requires him to be open and honest. His commitment that's
parency extends to every part of his work, from admitting
when he's wrong and embracing failure as an opportunity to
pivot and grow. Transparency can be the key to unfettered creativity, innovation,
and disruption. Two. Incentivize employees can be so much more
(33:17):
than a pep talk to rank takes accountability and ownership seriously,
and not only at the executive levels. From compensation to collaboration,
there can be concrete offerings at opportunities for growth, regardless
of someone's role or seniority. Depending on the goals you set,
this can have far reaching effects on sales and innovation
in addition to culture and teamwork. Three, Diversity can be
(33:41):
woven into the fabric of success. The advantages of employing
people with a multitude of perspectives and experiences can't be
boiled down into a single goal, quota, or initiative. Diversity
can serve a company in countless ways, especially when it's
built into every level of operation, from day to day discussion,
product testing and marketing, the board level strategizing. I'm Bob Pittman.
(34:05):
Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted
by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney Rosenbloom for booking
and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechich and Baheed Fraser.
Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor. Until
(34:31):
next time.
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm constantly making a six. You're constantly learning, learning on
these small failures so it avoids the big, big.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Big miss.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And so for me, the way I approach risk is
encourage an organization to embrace innovation, to embrace change, constantly
try things, and actually make it okay to fail, Actually
celebrate those failures, actually talk about those things of what
we learned and what we're going to go do about it.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic. Stories
from the Frontiers and Marketing. On this episode, we're going
deep with someone who has the Midas touch. These transformed brands,
one after the other and company after company, moving from
marketer to CEO. He's created enormous shareholder returns and we're
going to dig into the hows today with Terang Amin,
(01:02):
Chairman of the board and CEO at ELF Beauty. Terang
was born in Kenya moved to the US as a child.
Growing up, he helped his dad run the family owned
hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, and went on to Duke University
for undergrad and his MBA. Like many great execs, His
training ground was PNG, and he spent time running brands
(01:23):
for Pong and others before rising to his first CEO
job in twenty eleven. He's a purpose driven, passionate leader
who has been driving performance for over thirty years. He's
committed to diversity and also to disruption and credits Boat
for his remarkable success and to put that in perspective,
he has grown the Elf Beauty business five x since
(01:44):
arriving as CEO. Terang, Welcome, Well, thank you for having me.
I want to dig into your story and it's fascinating story,
but first I want to do you in sixty seconds.
You ready sounds great? Do you prefer cats or dogs? Dogs? Early?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Ryme, nightdowl early riser? West coast or East coast, West coast,
city or country city, beach or mountains, beach, coffee or tea, tea,
books or movies, movies, cook or eat out, cook, call
or text call. Work life balance or work life integration.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Integration. Okay, it's about to get harder. All time favorite
music artist, you two, favorite TV show Seinfeld, smartest person
you know, Fred Cohen, childhood hero Mohamma Gandhi. Favorite sport
to watch Basketball, Favorite movie shash Ank Redemption, most important
(02:44):
piece of advice you ever got, lean in, favorite city,
San Francisco, favorite place to visit Africa, and the final one,
secret talent gardening. Okay, great, let's jump in now. Know
this is going to be a surprise, But you're actually
not the first guest who grew up in their family motel.
(03:05):
Shaji Vishram, the founder of Happy Baby, the organic baby
food company, grew up in the family motel and Alabama
Rooms one twenty three, and like you, she said, it
taught her so much about life and business. So I
am fascinated by this story. So can you paint the
picture of that experience for you? Growing up in a motel,
(03:28):
working all the time with your family, That was.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
A pretty formative experience for me. So when I was fourteen,
we sold our house, took every penny we had, and
we bought our first hotel on Route one in Alexandria, Virginia.
We moved right into the manager's apartment, and our business
model as a family was we'd find these distressed properties,
we'd fix them up. We're good operators, and we kept
building from there. You did everything. If the maze didn't
(03:51):
show up, you made the rooms you rented, the rooms
you renovated. It was such an important experience for me.
Probably the most important is how you treat people. Because
there were small motels or more on the budget side,
we didn't have like high wages or other things, so
it really came down to how did you motivate people
who were oftentimes hourly and how did you incent kind
(04:12):
of our managers over time in terms of you know,
we had a model that if they hit certain criteria,
we'd help finance their own property. So it was a
great leg up and a way for them to really
change their families' lives as well. I had a pretty
classical career after that and large consumer goods, but I
tell people everything I know about cash flow, economic profit,
(04:34):
how you treat people really came from building our motel
business up with my dad, and I did that from
fourteen to about my mid twenties. Many many years later,
I still pull from those experiences. My gosh, we could
probably go on the entire podcast for everything I learned
to the motels.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
In the nineteen nineties, I was on the board of
a company called HFS which had a number of brands
for motels, and I was always struck with that over
representation in the ownership families. Why is that?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
You know, as you mentioned in your opening, we were
immigrants from East Africa, and there are a number of immigrants,
particularly when Idiamine came to power in Uganda and kicked
all the Indians out, Kenya, other countries that immigrated to
the US, and a lot of times where they kind
of left behind whatever their original profession was or their
business people. The motels were actually a really good model
(05:24):
because with a limited amount of capital you could get alone.
You could then actually not only live there, but earn
a living and be able to go from there. So
we're in India. Our ethnicities Gadratis, and a lot of
Gadratis got into the motel business. I think it's still
a huge proportion of the motels in the US are
owned by Gadratis. And like any immigrant family, immigrant community,
(05:48):
when someone gets into it, others learn that there's something
there and so I'm not unique in having that experience.
There are number of Ztratis in the US that also
had their start in these motels.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Did you ever think about staying in the business, You know, I.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Didn't and my parents didn't want me to either. There
was a real focus, particularly drive the community on education,
and so my parents were very set and I was
very set on going to university, going to grad school,
figuring out what I really wanted to do. And so
I would say it never was an aspiration as much
(06:24):
as I learned from it, I was definitely interested in
wanting to explore the world and do different things.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
You were obviously a good student. You went off to
Duke for undergrad and grad school too, and you have
an interesting story when you applied to the graduate School
of Business when you were still an undergrad and they
told you you had no business experience.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
How did you use that motel experience to become that
objection the dean of admissions. Since I was an undergrad
and done a lot of leadership things at Duke, you know,
you told me like, no, we don't accept people straight
out of undergrad. You need to go work. I basically,
I think, in about twenty minutes, described what my work
experience was in the motels, and it must have been
persuasive enough for him to let me in a great story.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
A stunning number of marketing focused CEOs got their startup PNG.
Actually surprising number of people that are on math and
magic got their startup P ANDNG. Why is that such
a fertile ground.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I actually went to p ANDNG almost by accident. I
did my undergraduate major in international policy. I thought I
was going to go do my MBA, to go work
at the World Bank, and then my name showed up
on some close lists for Proker and Gamble. To be
honest with you, I didn't even know what it was,
but what intrigued me about it was this notion that
in your mid twenties you could go run a brand,
(07:40):
and that really appealed to me of the ability to
be able to really get into every aspect of the business,
the whole aspect of consumers and understanding them, being able
to translate insights into action, and so I thought it
was a really great experience for getting a great overview
of almost every functional area moving a business forward, what
(08:02):
the brand stood for, and so I really loved my
time at PNG. It definitely was a great training ground,
as many others have experienced.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
One of your first big successes, I guess was a
p ANDNG when you were part of the team that
relaunched Panteen, taking it from a I think the numbers
are right. Of fifty million dollar haircare brand to a
two billion dollar global market leader. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
That was a really formative experience because I spent eight
years on Canteen.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It was my beauty.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I did almost every possible role in that business. Panteen
it existed for fifty years. It was almost on its
last legs. P ANDNG had gotten it through the Richardson
Vicks acquisition in the mid eighties, and by the time
I got on in nineteen ninety one, it still only
had fifty million dollars of sales, and there was one
failed relaunch after another. But the core of the brand
(08:52):
was this intersection between health and beauty, and I remember
we had a line we came out of hair so
healthy it shines, And like I think many great businesses,
it was the timing of a lot of things coming
together at the same time. These incredible flowing hair shots.
We put our two and one technology, put a conditioner
(09:13):
on it, did a lot of fundamentals, and it just
took off in the early nineties.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Long straight hair is in fashion.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But the best part of the Canteen story I tell
people all the time is we probably hit a wall
at least four times on that business where you would
grow really fast and the kind of plateau out and
the growing fast and platau out is that ability of
discovering what was aspirational yet achievable for consumers and how
we continue to pivot that brand. But it was a
(09:41):
great experience, including help in take it global.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
You know, it's an interesting point you mean about hitting
sort of the plateau, and I think all of us
have built products. You know, you go grow, grow, grow,
and then it slows down. How did you hit those?
It's interesting to me because very few people get over those.
That sort of is now the new high. Can you
give me an example of a couple and just tell
us how you got over it?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I mean, heck, I'll even give you an example. In
my current role at elf Beauty, very fast growing brand
in twenty eighteen, we hit a wall and we couldn't
figure out it. First, We're like, well is that our
value equation? It's something wrong with the product. And what
we realized is a bunch of mega influencer brands came
into our space, the Kylie Jenner's, the Fentees, the Buddha Beautyes,
(10:27):
And at first I thought our value proposition would insulate us,
but we found that no, they were taking all the
attention for consumers, and we weren't spending enough on the brand.
So I think the most important thing is to step
back and really get into where did we go wrong?
And it starts first and foremost with myself. I remember
get in front of our leadership team and saying, these
(10:47):
are my beliefs, and let me tell you where we
went wrong on each of these areas. We used to
brag that our value was so great we didn't have
to spend money on marketing, and I was dead wrong
on that. We were getting lost in all the noise
we'd gotten into retail stores. Yet many of those retail
stores were in malls that would never see a better day.
And then we basically got distracted. And so I think
(11:09):
the first thing was really I always tell people we
can face any reality, you just got to know what
the reality is. So I think the first step is
really getting a better understanding of what's what are the
drivers or what's not working, and then making bold moves.
I remember it was painful, but back in twenty nineteen,
on the same day we shut down all of our
retail stores we sent We had twenty six stores, spent
(11:31):
twenty six leaders to every store to let people know
what was going on and why we paid more than
market for severance. But it was still painful letting two
hundred associates go. But then we took the sixteen million
dollars or spending those stores, and we doubled down on
our digital business and we saw almost immediate results.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
So I would say two things.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
One, understand what the reality is, and then make sure
you're taking decisive action and not just wishing that things
will get better.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You think it's hard, but I see this in business,
and I'm seeing it watching others, certainly seeing it with myself.
Hard for people to sort of own up to it's
not working, we've got a problem.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, I think there's a natural human tendency to wish
for that it's going to get better. I feel like
that's an important role for a leader because others see it.
People in your organization will know when something's not working,
and they want leaders who own up to it. That
basically say hey guys, this isn't great. Let me tell
you where I believe I went wrong, let me tell
(12:32):
you what I'm doing about it, and it then role
models others to be able to step up and say, Okay,
there's nothing wrong with saying where have we failed and
what do we have to do about it?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
And I think it brings the team together. I'm going
to go back a little bit. You went on to
some big successes at Clorox after P and G, and
you got your first CEO shot. How did you make
the jump to CEO? You were obviously doing great with
the brands, great marketer, et cetera. But that's a big
jump to CEO.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I think one of the things that really helped me
throughout my career is I started in marketing and then
I went over to more of a general managed role
than I went back deeper into marketing than before my
first CEO role. I was a general manager over three
of the divisions at Clorox, So I had a good
combination of going deep in a particular area and then
going broad and learning the other functional areas. And so
(13:23):
I felt by the time I was GM of Clorox
businesses Kingsford Charcoal, Hitting Valley Ranch dressings, a fresh step
in litter. They were pretty autonomous. They had their own
supply chain, they had their own way of kind of distribution,
and so I felt like it was a good training
ground for me to really make sure I was adept
(13:44):
at the different functional areas, but more importantly, continue to
hone my leadership skills. And so when my first CEO
opportunity came up, it was a small company called Shift Nutrition,
it was a publicly traded company, private equity backed, I
felt well prepared. I knew the areas that I could go,
and particularly in terms of like how we build the team.
(14:04):
My professional background is I'm absolutely passionate about building brands.
The best way in how you build brands is you
lead the innovation in the category. But what I love
doing the most is assembling these high performance teams. I
always bragged that in thirty four years of being in
the consumer space, I've never had a business we haven't
grown multiples of the category. And I always attributed that
back to the team and the culture that we create,
(14:26):
and so that gave me a lot of confidence to
jump in and take my first ro.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I'll brag on you for a second here. You grew
that enterprise value from one hundred and ninety million to
one point five billion in just a couple of years.
So obviously got a big success there, but you moved into,
as you said, a public company. You know, part of
the CEO job is running the business. The other parts
dealing with shareholders A doubt in your background, you've had
a lot of training on dealing with the investors. How
(14:54):
did you learn that side of the business.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, it definitely was a pretty steep learning curve. I
remember my first earnings call it shift nutrition. I said something.
I had gotten a stat from one of our team
members and it was wrong, and I had to issue
I think, an okay on what I said wrong. But
there's no hesitancy in terms of being transparent of like,
you know that was the wrong numbers. I just told
(15:16):
you here's what it is. So I would say, you know,
from that rough start, the thing that's helped me the
most is I love being a CEO of a public company.
A lot of people don't, but I love it because
there's one hundred percent transparency. The internal story and the
external story have to be the same one, and I
think that interaction with investors and others makes you sharper
(15:39):
in terms of what are people getting, what are people
not getting? What is that narrative? I'd say The second
thing that's been most important is some people spend too
much time on the public company thing and managing investor relations.
I have always had the discipline of I will never
let a quarter get in the way of our long
term focus and strategy, and then also constrain the time
(16:05):
where you know you can take a life of its own.
I give investor relations two days a quarter, one day
in prepping for what the earnings release and the narrative
and talking with investors, and then maybe a second day
to do a conference or some investor relations.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I feel some.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Of my peers as CEO spend in an order amount
of time on that part of the business, and I
think if you're spending too much time on that part,
it's getting in the way of where you really need
to focus on, which is the team and your strategy.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
More of Math and Magic right after this quick break,
welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from
my conversations with terrag Amm. We had a real success
and then you made them move to ELF. Why did
(16:58):
you make the move?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
We had a great run at Shift. We ended up
selling the company to Recabin Kyser. I then took a
few months off and I looked at a lot of
different businesses, and I'll tell you my path to ELF
was a series of fortunate accidents. I was asked to
take a meeting to see this private company that was
going to be for sale, and at first I said, no,
(17:20):
I'm not interested in color cosmetics. There are too many brands,
too low barriers of entry. It really wasn't interested in
the category. But I also have an adage that says
never hurts to have a conversation, So under that rule,
I said all right, I'll take the meeting and instantly
fell in love with the business. Actually, today's my eleventh
anniversary of bing Ceol.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Congratulations, thank you, so.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
A little bit over eleven years ago I took that
first meeting and at that time the company was already
ten years old. And what I loved about the story
was the company was founded by a father and son entrepreneurs.
So I tend to be attractive to other entrepreneurs and founders,
and I loved their story. Alan Shama, the father, wanted
(18:04):
to go into business with his son Joey. They started
studying what categories could they disrupt, and they couldn't figure
out why did people charge so much? Money in cosmetics.
They had a lot of friends that were doing business
with the Dollar Channel, Dollar General Family Dollar, and so
they said, what could we do that we could sell
for a dollar? And Alan will tell me many times trying,
(18:24):
I don't know as many things as you do, but
I know how to buy a shirt for two dollars
and sell it for four. And that novice approach. They
completely turned cosmetics upside down because their original business model
was if the Dollar Channel was the retailer for a dollar,
they're going to buy it for me each piece for
fifty cents. I'm going to have to figure out how
(18:45):
to make it for thirty five cents. And they figured
it out. Everyone thought they were crazy at the time,
like you couldn't sell cosmetics for a dollar. And of course,
what I love about many entrepreneurs stories is you always
have to pivot. They then went to the Dollar Channel.
A Dollar Channel said no, we're not in interested, and
they're like, what wait, we put all this effort in,
what do you mean you're not interested? And Joey meanwhile
(19:06):
had gotten one of their eyeliner pencils to an editor
at Glamour and he said, oh my gosh, I can't
believe this is a dollar. I would love to write
about it, but you have to be in distribution. She's like,
you know, even if you had a website. And so
in two thousand and four, predating the iPhone, they started
a website called islipspace dot com selling cosmetics over the
(19:27):
internet for one dollar. Like I said, everyone thought they
were crazy. You couldn't sell cosmetics for a dollar. You
certainly could make money over the internet at a buck each,
but they figured it out. So that initial story of
how disruptive they were really appealed to me. I love
the digitally native roots, I love the value orientation. But
then what I saw was real potential in terms of
(19:48):
what we could do. They had just gotten into target.
They were highly productive in target, but they weren't in
distribution anywhere else. And so I love the story so
much I decided to jump in and co invest with
the private equity company and we bought the company back
in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Wow. Well, just I'm just going to put some context
for everyone listening today is you have taken ELF from
two hundred million in revenue over a billion, and your
stock has gone from seventeen dollars to two hundred dollars,
five x revenue growth, ten x stock growth. Pretty remarkable
performance coming out of that, and I want to dig
a little more into it, and I'll come to it,
(20:23):
but I want to sort of ask you a little bit,
because it keeps coming up here is your career is
filled with risky decisions. How do you think about risk?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It was funny my first CEO role the pe firm
that hired me. I remember it was the last dinner
where whether I was going to get the job or not.
They basically were like, oh, we looked at your background
and we don't like that you haven't had any big
public failures.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
And at first I was a little confused.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I was like what, and they're like, yeah, I know,
you've had a lot of success, and we like our
CEOs to have some big stumble. We feel it makes
some hungrier for what we do. I asked them, I said, okay,
do you mean to give you the flippant answer or
the real answer? They said, well, now that you say that,
do both, and I saorry the flippant answers don't make
me apologize for not being a loser, and they loved it.
(21:10):
I feel like I had the job right then, And
I said, but if you want the real answer, if
you ask me what mistakes I've made, I would respond,
since this morning, I'm constantly making a six. You're constantly learning.
So what ends up happening is you're learning on these
small failures, so it avoids the big, big.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Big miss.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
And so for me, the way I approach risk is
encourage an organization to embrace innovation, to embrace change, constantly
try things, and actually make it okay to fail, actually
celebrate those failures, actually talk about those things of what
we learned and what we're going to go do about it.
And so I think some people, when it comes to risk,
(21:54):
are trying to mitigate every possible thing that can go wrong.
And like I said, I think that's a fallacy. I
think really paying attention and focusing on what could really
send us sideways. Let's focus on those few things. But otherwise,
let's encourage people to keep moving forward, keep trying things,
and learn from them so we can continue to innovate.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
That's great advice and a great perspective. I've always loved
the folks who say success and failure are the same thing.
They're stepping stones. One you learn more from us, right,
which is the failure. It seems like a very big
part of who you are as CEO is your commitment
to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it begins at the top.
(22:38):
Can you talk a little bit about that commitment to
diversity and how it helps your company and your business
and how purpose driven separates you from others.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
It starts first with when we bought the company, this
intention of we want to reflect the community we serve.
So I'm really proud from our employee base. Our employee
base is seventy four percent women, and I think almost
seventy five percent gen Z and millennial forty four percent diverse.
We're very intentional of like, let's make sure we're reflecting
(23:10):
the people that we're serving. There was no DEI program
of quotas. There was just this intention of let's be
crystal clear of who are we serving, who's our community,
and how do we have people that reflected. It's one
of our biggest competitive advantages because we don't have to
do focus groups, we don't have to go do a
bunch of research. Our employees are the people that we're serving.
(23:31):
They have incredible insights and incredible knowledge and ability to
move forward, but we didn't want it to stop with
our employees. I remember when we went were decided to
go public. You know, I want to have a board
that also reflects the people that we're serving and more importantly,
has real diversity of thought that can really push our thinking.
(23:52):
My view of the board is, not only do they
responsibility shareholders, but it's a total waste of time if
you're not getting the smartest people you know, with very
different backgrounds helping push management teams on things that we're
not seeing. And so our stats on our board standpoint
is I think we're one of only two companies now
out of forty one hundred that has a board that's
(24:12):
seventy eight percent women and over forty four percent diverse.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
And it's more than the stats.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It's the different experience that say bring, the different thought
processes that really just help me and the team.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Another big part of what you do is as a disruptor.
Clearly it's part of your culture. How have you built
that into the culture and how have you harnessed it
for growth?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
I think the spirit of disruption for us has been
there from the very beginning, and I think, like many
digitally native businesses. There is definitely a culture of testing
and learning. Let's go try things, let's put it online,
see what happens, and let's get those signals from our
community and consumers what they respond to. But I think
the other thing is the team, And importantly it's not
(24:57):
just the team composition, but the culture put them in.
Where a culture of high performance teamwork, where you building
passion relationships, You're giving each other feedback, you have a
lot of mutual accountability, makes it a safe place to
disrupt and try things. And then then I think once
you start disrupting, you continue to disrupt because one leads
(25:19):
to the other and that becomes the norm.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
One of the things we do to be able to
encourage that as well is all the way to our
compensation system. It was very important to me, almost going
back to my motality is I saw the power of
owning something. So I insisted both at SHIFT and ELF,
every employee has to be a shareholder. It was a
big fight. When I remember I first got to SHIFT,
They're like, you know the private equity was like, no,
(25:43):
that's not our model. We only give equity to the
top team. And I'm like, well, well give me performance
incentives from my equity, so we can give equity to everyone.
And I saw the power of that at SHIFTS, so
it wasn't even a debate at ELF. I think we're
one of the few companies in our space that gives
meaningful equity to every single employee every year. So it
gets to that ownership, that level that I talk about
(26:05):
where we're in it together.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I think sin's our IPO.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We've given if you exclude the exec team, one hundred
and eighty million dollars of equity in the stock that's
gone up at least sevenfold, and so meaningful wealth creation
for our team. And I'm very explicit about that because
if people are owners, they just have much more skin
in the game, Like we're all owners, let's keep moving forward,
let's keep trying things. I think then builds upon itself
(26:29):
in that culture.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
On a personal level, how do you think about work
and your family and personal life. I can imagine growing
up running the motel it was sort of one and
the same. How do you think about it now?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
That's been very much part of my whole life. It
has been one and the same. When you're running a
motel business, it's a twenty four to seven business, you're
with your family.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
It's all together.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
And I think for me, a lot of people talk
about work life balance. For me, they're one and the same.
My personal life, my work life, they are so intertwined.
So it's very much a family affair. One of the
things my wife and I love doing is we do
these this series called Afternoon with the Means, where we'll
(27:13):
invite our key leaders and their spouses or partners to
our house for an afternoon as a way of thanking
them for what they're doing, the way of getting to
know them better. I love what I do at work,
I love my personal life, and I love that they're
both together.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Let's jump to some quick topics brand building. How do
you think about brands? How do you build them?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I feel brands sort of living, breathing things and that
constantly evolve and need to be nurtured. And so I
think of a brand of what is something represent in
a consumer's mind and what does it stand for, well
beyond any functional attributes or benefits and so, and I
love over my career being able to see kind of
(27:57):
how brands grow, how they evolve that they stand for.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Let's go to some advice. If someone wants to succeed
running a company, what's the most important advice you could
give them?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I would say the most important advice is work on
your peer to peer relationships. A lot of people spend
too little time understanding other functional areas, understanding what makes
people tick, how you work together, and most importantly, giving
that feedback, because I think where people often fail is
(28:31):
they never knew what hit them or detracted from them.
And so being able to really make sure that you
develop that way of listening really well and providing feedback
I think are probably two of the most important skills
in running anything.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You've had a spectacular career and you've made some great choices.
How do you know it's time to change jobs? An
advice there, I would say, you got to love what
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I have one of my eighty twenty rules is eighty
percent of what you work on, you got to love
twenty percents. You know the nonsense we all have to
deal with. Whenever they gets out of whack, then you've
got to you almost got to do a time out
and say, okay, we got to renegotiate what's going on here.
I've got to change something and so for me, unless
you have true passion of what you're doing, you're probably
(29:18):
not doing the right thing. And so I would say
making sure you're taking those moments of introspection of am
I truly happy? Am I loving what I'm doing? Am
I actually good at what I'm doing? And how do
I get better? And if you don't have that fundamental
passion and curiosity, then I'd say it's probably time to
do something different.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
College. Does everybody need to go to college?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
No? I don't even know where what schools most of
the people I work with went to. It's about curiosity,
learning and wanting to get better and never bought into
yet to be credentialed in a certain way to be
effective in life. I love my college experience. It was
just a great platform to continue to learn. But I'd
say one of the other's secrets of being successful is
(30:05):
never feel like you know anything, always being curious, always
asking questions, always wanting to get better, always surrounding yourself
with great people. That is so much more important than
any particular credential or environment. You know.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
It's interesting we hear the word curiosity a lot, and
talking to other leaders, it's actually part of our company's
values is curiosity probably one of the most important things.
It's interesting to hear you define that as sort of
this important thing just for life and career. Final advice,
if you could go back in time and give some
advice to your twenty one year old self, what would
(30:39):
that advice be.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
That advice would be embrace what you think is risky
or what you're worried about. I mean, I got married
at a pretty young age. I was the only kind
of breadwinner, and I was very happy at PNG. But
there's an entire revolution happening on the internet, and I
was a little risk verse or reluctant to kind of say, hey,
(31:02):
I should just take the leap when things are going
well to go pursue something that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
And I'd say so.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
My biggest advice is the advice somebody once gave me,
which is lean in, say yes, try something different, and
don't be so worried about what if it doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
We end each episode of Math and Magic with a
shout out to those who've influenced us the most. From
two sides, the analytical side. Some people call them quants,
some people call them data people. Some people say in
pattern recognition, people, etc. But the math side and the
other person we want to give a shout out to
is that sort of creative genius, the promotional, the art,
(31:41):
the magic. Who are your two?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
So on the math side, I would say Jensen. Want
just love his story and his vision, but more importantly
than vision and perseverance is ability to get that done
and the progress and videos made. It's just been incredible,
very in.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
All of that on the magic side.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
On the magic side, I would say Mike Cesario, the
founder and CEO of Liquid Death. I just love that
he made a can of water an object of desire
turned it into the art of entertainment. I think that's magic.
I also love the fact that they start with a
very simple question, which is, what's the dumbest thing we
can do?
Speaker 3 (32:20):
You know, dumbest thing.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
You can do is take a can of water and
make it something that's cool. And then they're constantly I
feel like this ability of normalizing the bizarre. I just
feel like it's quite magical what he and his team
are doing.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Terang, what an unusual and inspiring story you have, but
personally and professionally and what unique and wildly successful company
you've had huge congrats thanks for sharing your insights. Here
are a few things I picked up from my conversation
with Terang. One, Transparency is a superpower. One of the
reasons Durang loves running a public company is because it
(32:56):
requires him to be open and honest. His commitment that's
parency extends to every part of his work, from admitting
when he's wrong and embracing failure as an opportunity to
pivot and grow. Transparency can be the key to unfettered creativity, innovation,
and disruption. Two. Incentivize employees can be so much more
(33:17):
than a pep talk to rank takes accountability and ownership seriously,
and not only at the executive levels. From compensation to collaboration,
there can be concrete offerings at opportunities for growth, regardless
of someone's role or seniority. Depending on the goals you set,
this can have far reaching effects on sales and innovation
in addition to culture and teamwork. Three, Diversity can be
(33:41):
woven into the fabric of success. The advantages of employing
people with a multitude of perspectives and experiences can't be
boiled down into a single goal, quota, or initiative. Diversity
can serve a company in countless ways, especially when it's
built into every level of operation, from day to day discussion,
product testing and marketing, the board level strategizing. I'm Bob Pittman.
(34:05):
Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted
by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney Rosenbloom for booking
and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechich and Baheed Fraser.
Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor. Until
(34:31):
next time.
Host
Bob Pittman
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.