August 21, 2024 • 23 mins
✨🙌 Tune into a powerful conversation between two trailblazers-- KOST103.5's Ellen K & C.M.O./President of E.L.F. Cosmetics Kory Marchisotto. 🙌🏆 Tune in to hear how E.L.F. is empowering EVERY eye, lip and face by championing accessibility for all.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Elf Beauty has a commitment to advancing women in sports,
and it goes back since the brand was founded twenty
years ago. They were founded so they could disrupt the
status quo and champion accessibility. They want to open up
the worlds of every eye, lip and face. That's why
Elf is a founding partner of Iheartwomen's Sports and the
exclusive skin and cosmetic partner at the Billie Jean King Cup,
(00:21):
the only global sporting competition named after a woman, bringing
a strong message of empowerment to the event, we all
win on a level playing field. Learn more at elfbeauty
dot com. Hi Melan Kay and welcome to women we love.
I am here with a woman I love personally, Corey
Corey Marchi Soto, SVP and CMO of Elf Beauty, Welcome.
(00:43):
So happy you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And you are a woman I love and admire and adore.
And I just found out that you have a star
in Hollywood and I'm like, girl, I want to be
you and I grow up.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Oh my god, Corey. Please, Well I want to talk
about you and your origin story. Well, so, k boss,
tell me how you got into the beauty industry. You
were really looking at a career in serious stuff finance
on Wall Street, and then everything changed.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I wanted to and those dreams got shattered pretty quickly.
So I actually chose to go to University Downtown Manhattan
because they had an affiliation with the large Wall Street
financial institutions. And I just had this dream when I
was a young girl that my ticket to a new
path than the one I was handed looked like a
(01:31):
woman in a business suit with a briefcase. But I
didn't know what that meant. So I just attached that
next to the bull on Wall Street and I was like,
that's where I need to be. And when I started
interviewing for the big financial institutions, my antenna was so
off alignment. It just didn't feel right in my core.
And I'm a headheart, soul alignment kind of person, and
(01:51):
I was like, WHOA, this feels wildly off. Now. Imagine
feeling that your dreams that you've had since you're like
five years old are getting shattered as each door closes
in this long, cold, sterile hallway. And I left those
interviews feeling like, Man, I just spent all this time, energy,
effort college to get to a place that just doesn't
feel right. And at that moment, my dad called and said,
(02:14):
hey kid, he used to call me kid. Debbie Nouzo,
who was the vice president of sales at Yvon, she
is looking for somebody to fill in Matt leave. I
know you're looking for a job. This could be a
great way for you to pay for your last year
of college. And I was like, stop calling, I don't
need your help.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh yeah, of course. You know you're doing it on
your own, right, as your corey.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Right, what twenty year old actually wants help from anyone?
So finally I caved and decided to at least go
on the interview. And when I got to their office,
my aunttenna and the frequency was yelling. It was this black,
lacquered office with mirrors everywhere, and this beautiful French woman
at the desk, perfectly snow white skin, gorgeous red lips, short,
(02:56):
severe black haircut, and the phone was ringing. And I
walked in and she paused, time, looked at me, pause, Time,
picked up the phone and goes, bao, oh my god.
And I was like, I don't know where I am,
but I want to spend the rest of my life here.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
What a gift that you took your dad's calls, that
you walked through those doors at Jivan she and that
you you kind of just woke up and came out
of your chrysalis.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That was twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
And I got this off your socials Corey. You posted
this from Albert Hubbard. The world is moving so fast
these days that the man who says it can't be
done is generally interrupted by someone doing it. Albert Hubbard, So.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know when that was written. No, we're talking like
eighteen seventy five kind of time.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
How did Albert know? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
How did he know?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
How did he alk?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And it's pretty amazing when you pass things and they
stop time for you. That quote stop time for me.
So whenever I see things that stop time for me,
I just stop. I pause, and I reflect on it.
And when I ref on what he was saying, I
was blown away that he said that so long ago,
that at that time people were thinking the world is
(04:07):
moving so fast that if you don't capture the possibilities,
that you're going to be left behind. I'm like, here
we are standing one hundred and some odd years later,
and I'm saying the same thing. And one of the
things I love about where I am and this team
that we built is we're all really united around the
fact that we don't like to waste time talking about
(04:28):
doing shit. And we all came from the companies where
we did waste an inordinate amount of time talking about
doing shit. And the magic of where we are today
is we're almost fixing problems for our younger selves. Oh right, Okay,
we're not going to talk about it. We're going to
go do it. We're going to prove it, and then
we're going to go do more of it. And that
(04:51):
is the magic of the elves. We call ourselves the elves,
and all the elves are united around this renegade spirit,
this bias for action, and we want to be in it,
doing it, learning it, iterating it. We don't wait for
perfection or for somebody to tell us that this is
going to be the outcome, or let's get in it
and figure it out. And there's a real magic in
(05:13):
that hands on, real time learning experience.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
You have so much rapid growth, And I love what
you said. You say you pull it off with what
you call the three step magic recipe. Put your head
and the stars, put your feet on the ground, and
move at the speed of culture, and that's what you do.
That's magical. Corey. You're a disruptor and I'm swiping through
your social media and I see too many Dicks. Tell
(05:37):
me about the too Many Dicks campaign? What does that mean?
I mean, I know what it means, but explained to
everyone listening.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So what's really fascinating about that story is we're always
looking for signals, and what I call a head in
the stars is looking for constellations because there's a lot
of noise out there, and if you think, when you
look up at this beautiful, starry night, where do you
find the constellations? It's not easy to spot them. So
we're looking for the constellations. And when we find the constellation,
(06:06):
then we put our feet on the ground and we
do something about it, and we do it at elfspeed,
really fast. So in this particular case, the constellation was
formed when we realized that we were one of four
out of four two hundred publicly traded companies. I'm just
gonna pause there for a minute and say that one
more time, because it's a lot to digest that many numbers.
(06:27):
But one of four, so there's only four publicly traded companies.
Out of four thousand, two hundred that have a board
of directors, that's two thirds women and one third diverse.
And when we saw that, we said, okay, that's one star,
but that's not enough. That's not enough, because women in
diversity are great. But this is a publicly traded company.
(06:47):
We're talking about the New York Stock Exchange. If you
don't have the performance point, if you don't have the
receipts to prove it, nobody cares. So he said, all right,
let's go do some fact gathering to build and complete
this comment, because great, our board is great, but so
what well, so what is We have twenty one consecutive
quarters of net sales growth and there's only five public
(07:10):
consumer companies who can say that. So we're an extremely
rarefied territory. But we still haven't completed a constellation yet.
So then we got the stat that said you are
the best performing stock on Wall Street in the last
five years with one thousand, five hundred and sixty seven
percent growth. And that's a real number out of one again, Yeah,
one thousand, five hundred and sixty seven percent growth out
(07:31):
of one thousand, six hundred and fifteen publicly traded companies
on the NYS that have been around for five years.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So now we're like, okay, this constellation is almost complete,
I would say is complete, almost complete. So we're doing it.
It's working, it's delivering real, hardcore results. What's happening in
the world around us, and that's what we wanted to
see to complete the constellation. And a couple of things
that we saw. One there were more men named rich,
(08:03):
Richard or Dick than on boards of directors, then entire
groups of underrepresented people. That was a shocker, and we
were like, okay, let's put that star in the sky.
That's an important one. And then we say, well, what
happens outside of ELF when you put women in the
highest seats of decision making power. So, for those of
(08:25):
you who don't know, women make up forty seven percent
of the workforce, but they're only twenty seven percent of
corporate board seats, and yet the companies that have gender
diversity deliver twenty seven percent greater performance. Now we have
our constellation. Okay, okay, so now we say, all right, well,
(08:45):
how are we going to put this together in a
way that's going to shock people into a wake so
we said, well, there are so many dicks and so
few of everyone else. And not only did we have
the author Alady to say that and the data to
prove it, which you can find on our website and
(09:06):
look at all the incredible data. We built an entire
database of thirty seven thousand public board members to be
able to slice and dice the data, to give us
real time information, to be able to help people understand
why this matters. We plastered it all over Wall Street,
all over Wall Street, in the Oculus, in the oculus,
(09:30):
outside the NYSEC, and we were like, if we're going
to go, we're going to go all in.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, and you did and we congratulations, Thank you. ELF
Beauty is committed to empowering legendary women on the tennis court,
at the racetrack with Indy five hundred driver Catherine leg
in the board room with the Change the Board Game initiative,
and elsewhere. That's why ELF is the exclusive skin and
cosmetic partner at the Billie Jean King Cup, the only
(09:55):
global sporting competition named after a woman, bringing a strong
message of empowerment to the event. It's the only tennis
competition that provides all the nations who participate with money
to continue to fund tennis programs, ensuring an unprecedented platform
for creating opportunities and changing lives. The work to empower
women in sports complements ELF's work to encourage inclusivity and
(10:16):
diversity in the highest seats of power. ELF is energized
to change the conversation and fuel the narrative for others
to pick up what they put down. Dialogue and discussion
lead to action, which can then change the world. ELF
Beauty believes we all win on a level playing field.
Learn more at elf beauty dot com. That's elfbauty dot com.
(10:37):
Let's talk about some of the representatives you have for
your brand, Corey, Billy Jean King. I know that you
feel really close to her. She is such a great
spokesperson for the brand. Also Katherine Legg and I'm loving
Anastasia Pagonis Blind Swimmer. Tell us how you partnered with
(10:58):
these amazing women.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, I mean, we have created this orbit and we
send out the ELF signal and what's coming back is
just exceptional. And just to go to Billy Jean for
a second, She's changed my life in so many ways.
And what I love about her is she's over eighty
years old. She's not going to stop. And you know,
(11:23):
she says, I'm going to fight the good fight until
my last breath, and she means it. And she said
something to me that stopped time, that I'd love to
stop time here for a minute and just reflect on
it together. She said to me that she has fought
for seventy years. So she started when she was about
ten years old, when she saw the injustices for women
(11:44):
and how they couldn't make their way through sports and
she had to fight her way through. So she started
the fight around ten years old. So for seventy years,
she felt that any of the support that women were
getting was charity. And she said that for the first
time now she's seen a page turn where she feels
like women are a good investment. Oh my gosh, And
(12:06):
just think about that for a minute. Seventy years and
she kept fighting and kept fighting and kept fighting. But
people were looking at her like sure because it's a
charitable thing. And what that said to me is, man,
we got to fight this good fight until our last breath.
It took her seventy years to see that come true.
(12:26):
She's passing the baton to us and we're taking that
really seriously.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, well, I know when I said her name, you
got emotional and I was like, oh, I'm gonna make
Corey cry.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Pressure is a privilege that she likes to tell us,
and tass is as Honosaga is just an extraordinary young
woman who has really triumphed after trials and tribulations, and
she's inspired all of us. She gets in a room,
she talks to us about her journey. She's fun she's funny,
(12:58):
she's adorable. She's just this electric energy and she doesn't
let the fact that she lost her sight at fourteen
years old get in her way. She actually uses it
as fuel, but bigger than that, it's not fuel for her,
it's fuel for anyone who can take inspiration from her story,
which is why she's so public about it. And I
(13:19):
love that people who pay it forward and who shine
that light bright in the sky for us to make
constellations so that we can act on them in service
to others.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
We have to talk about our girl, Catherine Legg. I've
never met a professional race car driver before in my life,
and I am just I love her. I'm blown away
by her her pink elf car. And then just own
the track. It's just it's mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And we were there together and I think we both
cried that day. So of all of the experiences I've
had in my twenty five year journey, I cried more
that day than any other time in my career, out
of love and joy and excitement for what we were doing,
which was serving the underserved in many different ways. So
if I just start with Catherine for a second, and
(14:05):
how emotional she felt being the only woman driver in
that race, but also only the ninth driver in one
hundred and eight year history. So think about how she's
feeling in that moment. And we had the great privilege
of chatting with her beforehand, and I couldn't believe how cool,
calm and collected she was. I'm like, you're about to
(14:26):
go around the track two hundred and thirty one. Yeah,
I had more anxiety than she did. And she looked
at me and thanked me. I said, what are you
thanking me for? Outside of this stuff, the pink color
on the car and the support, what are you really
thanking me for? Because I could see it in her eyes,
and she said, in my entire forty three years, I've
(14:46):
never been invited to be a woman.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh my go.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And we were the first brand where she could let
her femininity shine and she felt complete.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Oh my good. Now you're gonna make me cry.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
When you think about that. We were serving the underserved,
starting with her because all of her sponsorships have always
been masculine stuff in a masculine world. It's tires and
tires and oil and right, so we come in and
we're like, be who you are. And that was a
game changer for her. And then we saw what happened
with the fans and for your audience, who's listening three
(15:24):
hundred and fifty thousand people in one place. And when
I was told that, I still couldn't wrap my head
around it until I saw it in real life. Right,
you had the same reaction. And half of them are women, yes,
but nobody is talking to them. This is almost a
religion for them. They spend a year planning how is
their day going to be at the Indy five hundred,
(15:45):
and they bring coolers and they come with generations and families,
and there's no place for the women to go. There's
nobody talking to them. There's no booth servicing their needs.
They were lined up at our booth for miles. I
had dads, fathers, generations of women falling into my arms, crying,
saying thank you for finally creating a place for us.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Did you ever think, as as that little girl, the
youngest of three, that you would be changing the face
of professional racing one day? Never in a million years,
you'd be building constellations in the sky right, Well, they
must be so proud of your entire family.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
It's truly extraordinary, and you can't do it without a
community of people supporting you. And my family is just
exceptional group of hard working, challenger human beings who have
given me so much might and so much strength and
so much belief in who I am and what I'm
capable of. And then the team I surrounded myself with.
(16:47):
I mean, you know, Patrick, he's like my right hand,
left hand and everything in between, and he's pretty much
the one who's responsible for all this awesomeness. And we
just surround ourselves with really great people. And when really
great people come together with a desire to do great things,
great stuff happens. And that's what we're that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Well, Corey, I've been an ELF user for years and
years and years. But what really kind of reignited me
with the brand was Jennifer Coolidge and your Super Bowl commercials.
Tell us about how that all came about. That was
so amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That was another Constellation building moment. So we had this
incredible power with power Grip Primer, and we needed to
put it on a bigger stage. ELF had outgrown all
the things that we had done before, right, we had
blossomed into this flower that Outkrwitz Garden, and we said, well,
where could we take it? And we moved really fast.
Remember that we're fast, Okay, Yeah, so we were. Our
(17:44):
head of insights called me up and said, we are
a very short distance to becoming the number one skew
in all of mass cosmetics. And I almost passed out
and died. I was like, how is it even possible?
And how far are we? And she said, k boss,
pull another one of those markets stunts. You're there And
I was like, oh yeah, So, so of course it's
(18:07):
like there's no sign. So I called Patrick. I was like, Pat,
we got to figure out what we can do in
a really short amount of time that is going to
get us to that number one position. So let's look
at the calendar, what's upcoming? And the super Bowl was
in three weeks, three weeks, three weeks. Oh my god.
So yeah, when we say so, we went to step one,
(18:31):
which was dream big. Yes, who is the brightest cultural
star in the sky right now who we could attach
to this power grip primer that would make perfect sense
and put it on the biggest stage that there is.
And Jennifer Coolidge was the name we dreamt. So the
(18:51):
other thing we saw, which is not dissimilar to why
we were at the Indy five hundred, is obviously, before
you're going to invest that kind of money, you need
to understand is there an audience ripe for this? So
we looked at the stats at that time it was
one hundred and fifteen million viewers, and we said, okay, well,
how many of them are women?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Half? Half?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Okay, great, there it is again half are women. And
how many commercials are really speaking to women less than
one percent? Oh god. So again we came in to
serve the underserved, and we did it in a playful, humorous,
clever way that obviously made a big impact with you,
who was already a user, and introduced a very large
(19:29):
number of people to the brand. That never knew the
brand before, and it was an incredible moment for us
to recognize the power of serving the underserved.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Okay, let's talk about Billy Jean King and the future
of Billy Jean King and ELF celebrating fifty years of
equal play for equal pay. So what do you have planned.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It's funny when you say that, because when you think
about the commitment to fifty years of celebrating equality in sports,
we ambition to create that in the board room. And
she was so inspirational for us on that journey that
we asked, actually asked her to come along with us.
So she became an integral part of our change the
(20:11):
Board Game initiative. She was serving facts, letting everybody know
about the awful inequalities, because first you have to make
people aware of the problem before you can solve the problem.
And on that journey, as you get closer and you
start talking about possibilities, she brought up to us, you know,
how can we continue this relationship. We're making so much
(20:32):
magic here together, And I said, we want to keep
changing the game and where can we do that? So
we are going to be the sponsor of the Billy
Jean King Cup this November fantastic. And additionally, probably the
part that gets me most excited is there's a power
of Women's Summit for women in sports that we're going
to be partaking in. So it gives us another platform
(20:54):
to really rise up women in sports and to further
this incredible conversation.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Change the board and that you get to help people.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And that's really the part of it, right because when
I think about how we're paying it forward for the
next generations, we want to change the landscape so that
when little girls look up, they're not worried about we
need more women in the boardrooms. They'll already be there.
Go fix another problem, because there'll be plenty more for
(21:24):
you to fix. So I think the key component for
us here is to recognize where do we have the credibility,
the authority and the red carpet hiding in plain sight
like the Indy five hundred, like the Super Bowl, These
places where there is a hunger and an appetite and
(21:45):
a desire that nobody can really articulate because they don't
even realize it until it happens, and then it hits
them over the head and they're like, oh my god,
Elf is here. At the Indy five hundred. Yes, So
that's really what we're focused on. And when I think
about the work we're doing now with the Women's Sports
Audio Network, we couldn't be anymore excited because once again,
(22:05):
the math is not mathing right. So it's crazy when
you think about the fact that only fifteen percent of
coverage goes to women's sports, yet they're fifty one percent
of the audience, and even further than that, eighty four
percent of all sports fans, all genders, say they want
(22:26):
to see more women in sports. So the math is
not mathing. People are not listening, they're not paying attention.
So we are now broadcasting three hundred and sixty five
days a year of women's sports and women's topics and
women's subject matter that will iterate over time to best
serve the needs of this audience that's been underserved.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Corey Marchisoto, you are such a wonderful woman. Thank you
for being here on Women We Love. Come back soon.
I love you so much and keep doing what you're
doing with ELF. You are such a rock start.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Well, you're a woman we adore and thank you for
what you put out into the world because you are
making the world a better place and we appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Thanks. Elf Beauty has a commitment to advancing women in
sports and it goes back since the brand was founded
twenty years ago. They were founded so they could disrupt
the status quo and champion accessibility. They want to open
up the worlds of every eye, lip and face. That's
why ELF is a founding partner of Iheartwomen's Sports and
the exclusive skin and cosmetic partner at the Billie Jean
(23:31):
King Cup, the only global sporting competition named after a woman.
Bringing a strong message of empowerment to the event, we
all win on a level playing field. Learn more at
elfbeauty dot com.
Elf Beauty has a commitment to advancing women in sports,
and it goes back since the brand was founded twenty
years ago. They were founded so they could disrupt the
status quo and champion accessibility. They want to open up
the worlds of every eye, lip and face. That's why
Elf is a founding partner of Iheartwomen's Sports and the
exclusive skin and cosmetic partner at the Billie Jean King Cup,
(00:21):
the only global sporting competition named after a woman, bringing
a strong message of empowerment to the event, we all
win on a level playing field. Learn more at elfbeauty
dot com. Hi Melan Kay and welcome to women we love.
I am here with a woman I love personally, Corey
Corey Marchi Soto, SVP and CMO of Elf Beauty, Welcome.
(00:43):
So happy you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And you are a woman I love and admire and adore.
And I just found out that you have a star
in Hollywood and I'm like, girl, I want to be
you and I grow up.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Oh my god, Corey. Please, Well I want to talk
about you and your origin story. Well, so, k boss,
tell me how you got into the beauty industry. You
were really looking at a career in serious stuff finance
on Wall Street, and then everything changed.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I wanted to and those dreams got shattered pretty quickly.
So I actually chose to go to University Downtown Manhattan
because they had an affiliation with the large Wall Street
financial institutions. And I just had this dream when I
was a young girl that my ticket to a new
path than the one I was handed looked like a
(01:31):
woman in a business suit with a briefcase. But I
didn't know what that meant. So I just attached that
next to the bull on Wall Street and I was like,
that's where I need to be. And when I started
interviewing for the big financial institutions, my antenna was so
off alignment. It just didn't feel right in my core.
And I'm a headheart, soul alignment kind of person, and
(01:51):
I was like, WHOA, this feels wildly off. Now. Imagine
feeling that your dreams that you've had since you're like
five years old are getting shattered as each door closes
in this long, cold, sterile hallway. And I left those
interviews feeling like, Man, I just spent all this time, energy,
effort college to get to a place that just doesn't
feel right. And at that moment, my dad called and said,
(02:14):
hey kid, he used to call me kid. Debbie Nouzo,
who was the vice president of sales at Yvon, she
is looking for somebody to fill in Matt leave. I
know you're looking for a job. This could be a
great way for you to pay for your last year
of college. And I was like, stop calling, I don't
need your help.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh yeah, of course. You know you're doing it on
your own, right, as your corey.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Right, what twenty year old actually wants help from anyone?
So finally I caved and decided to at least go
on the interview. And when I got to their office,
my aunttenna and the frequency was yelling. It was this black,
lacquered office with mirrors everywhere, and this beautiful French woman
at the desk, perfectly snow white skin, gorgeous red lips, short,
(02:56):
severe black haircut, and the phone was ringing. And I
walked in and she paused, time, looked at me, pause, Time,
picked up the phone and goes, bao, oh my god.
And I was like, I don't know where I am,
but I want to spend the rest of my life here.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
What a gift that you took your dad's calls, that
you walked through those doors at Jivan she and that
you you kind of just woke up and came out
of your chrysalis.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That was twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
And I got this off your socials Corey. You posted
this from Albert Hubbard. The world is moving so fast
these days that the man who says it can't be
done is generally interrupted by someone doing it. Albert Hubbard, So.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know when that was written. No, we're talking like
eighteen seventy five kind of time.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
How did Albert know? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
How did he know?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
How did he alk?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And it's pretty amazing when you pass things and they
stop time for you. That quote stop time for me.
So whenever I see things that stop time for me,
I just stop. I pause, and I reflect on it.
And when I ref on what he was saying, I
was blown away that he said that so long ago,
that at that time people were thinking the world is
(04:07):
moving so fast that if you don't capture the possibilities,
that you're going to be left behind. I'm like, here
we are standing one hundred and some odd years later,
and I'm saying the same thing. And one of the
things I love about where I am and this team
that we built is we're all really united around the
fact that we don't like to waste time talking about
(04:28):
doing shit. And we all came from the companies where
we did waste an inordinate amount of time talking about
doing shit. And the magic of where we are today
is we're almost fixing problems for our younger selves. Oh right, Okay,
we're not going to talk about it. We're going to
go do it. We're going to prove it, and then
we're going to go do more of it. And that
(04:51):
is the magic of the elves. We call ourselves the elves,
and all the elves are united around this renegade spirit,
this bias for action, and we want to be in it,
doing it, learning it, iterating it. We don't wait for
perfection or for somebody to tell us that this is
going to be the outcome, or let's get in it
and figure it out. And there's a real magic in
(05:13):
that hands on, real time learning experience.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
You have so much rapid growth, And I love what
you said. You say you pull it off with what
you call the three step magic recipe. Put your head
and the stars, put your feet on the ground, and
move at the speed of culture, and that's what you do.
That's magical. Corey. You're a disruptor and I'm swiping through
your social media and I see too many Dicks. Tell
(05:37):
me about the too Many Dicks campaign? What does that mean?
I mean, I know what it means, but explained to
everyone listening.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So what's really fascinating about that story is we're always
looking for signals, and what I call a head in
the stars is looking for constellations because there's a lot
of noise out there, and if you think, when you
look up at this beautiful, starry night, where do you
find the constellations? It's not easy to spot them. So
we're looking for the constellations. And when we find the constellation,
(06:06):
then we put our feet on the ground and we
do something about it, and we do it at elfspeed,
really fast. So in this particular case, the constellation was
formed when we realized that we were one of four
out of four two hundred publicly traded companies. I'm just
gonna pause there for a minute and say that one
more time, because it's a lot to digest that many numbers.
(06:27):
But one of four, so there's only four publicly traded companies.
Out of four thousand, two hundred that have a board
of directors, that's two thirds women and one third diverse.
And when we saw that, we said, okay, that's one star,
but that's not enough. That's not enough, because women in
diversity are great. But this is a publicly traded company.
(06:47):
We're talking about the New York Stock Exchange. If you
don't have the performance point, if you don't have the
receipts to prove it, nobody cares. So he said, all right,
let's go do some fact gathering to build and complete
this comment, because great, our board is great, but so
what well, so what is We have twenty one consecutive
quarters of net sales growth and there's only five public
(07:10):
consumer companies who can say that. So we're an extremely
rarefied territory. But we still haven't completed a constellation yet.
So then we got the stat that said you are
the best performing stock on Wall Street in the last
five years with one thousand, five hundred and sixty seven
percent growth. And that's a real number out of one again, Yeah,
one thousand, five hundred and sixty seven percent growth out
(07:31):
of one thousand, six hundred and fifteen publicly traded companies
on the NYS that have been around for five years.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So now we're like, okay, this constellation is almost complete,
I would say is complete, almost complete. So we're doing it.
It's working, it's delivering real, hardcore results. What's happening in
the world around us, and that's what we wanted to
see to complete the constellation. And a couple of things
that we saw. One there were more men named rich,
(08:03):
Richard or Dick than on boards of directors, then entire
groups of underrepresented people. That was a shocker, and we
were like, okay, let's put that star in the sky.
That's an important one. And then we say, well, what
happens outside of ELF when you put women in the
highest seats of decision making power. So, for those of
(08:25):
you who don't know, women make up forty seven percent
of the workforce, but they're only twenty seven percent of
corporate board seats, and yet the companies that have gender
diversity deliver twenty seven percent greater performance. Now we have
our constellation. Okay, okay, so now we say, all right, well,
(08:45):
how are we going to put this together in a
way that's going to shock people into a wake so
we said, well, there are so many dicks and so
few of everyone else. And not only did we have
the author Alady to say that and the data to
prove it, which you can find on our website and
(09:06):
look at all the incredible data. We built an entire
database of thirty seven thousand public board members to be
able to slice and dice the data, to give us
real time information, to be able to help people understand
why this matters. We plastered it all over Wall Street,
all over Wall Street, in the Oculus, in the oculus,
(09:30):
outside the NYSEC, and we were like, if we're going
to go, we're going to go all in.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, and you did and we congratulations, Thank you. ELF
Beauty is committed to empowering legendary women on the tennis court,
at the racetrack with Indy five hundred driver Catherine leg
in the board room with the Change the Board Game initiative,
and elsewhere. That's why ELF is the exclusive skin and
cosmetic partner at the Billie Jean King Cup, the only
(09:55):
global sporting competition named after a woman, bringing a strong
message of empowerment to the event. It's the only tennis
competition that provides all the nations who participate with money
to continue to fund tennis programs, ensuring an unprecedented platform
for creating opportunities and changing lives. The work to empower
women in sports complements ELF's work to encourage inclusivity and
(10:16):
diversity in the highest seats of power. ELF is energized
to change the conversation and fuel the narrative for others
to pick up what they put down. Dialogue and discussion
lead to action, which can then change the world. ELF
Beauty believes we all win on a level playing field.
Learn more at elf beauty dot com. That's elfbauty dot com.
(10:37):
Let's talk about some of the representatives you have for
your brand, Corey, Billy Jean King. I know that you
feel really close to her. She is such a great
spokesperson for the brand. Also Katherine Legg and I'm loving
Anastasia Pagonis Blind Swimmer. Tell us how you partnered with
(10:58):
these amazing women.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, I mean, we have created this orbit and we
send out the ELF signal and what's coming back is
just exceptional. And just to go to Billy Jean for
a second, She's changed my life in so many ways.
And what I love about her is she's over eighty
years old. She's not going to stop. And you know,
(11:23):
she says, I'm going to fight the good fight until
my last breath, and she means it. And she said
something to me that stopped time, that I'd love to
stop time here for a minute and just reflect on
it together. She said to me that she has fought
for seventy years. So she started when she was about
ten years old, when she saw the injustices for women
(11:44):
and how they couldn't make their way through sports and
she had to fight her way through. So she started
the fight around ten years old. So for seventy years,
she felt that any of the support that women were
getting was charity. And she said that for the first
time now she's seen a page turn where she feels
like women are a good investment. Oh my gosh, And
(12:06):
just think about that for a minute. Seventy years and
she kept fighting and kept fighting and kept fighting. But
people were looking at her like sure because it's a
charitable thing. And what that said to me is, man,
we got to fight this good fight until our last breath.
It took her seventy years to see that come true.
(12:26):
She's passing the baton to us and we're taking that
really seriously.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, well, I know when I said her name, you
got emotional and I was like, oh, I'm gonna make
Corey cry.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Pressure is a privilege that she likes to tell us,
and tass is as Honosaga is just an extraordinary young
woman who has really triumphed after trials and tribulations, and
she's inspired all of us. She gets in a room,
she talks to us about her journey. She's fun she's funny,
(12:58):
she's adorable. She's just this electric energy and she doesn't
let the fact that she lost her sight at fourteen
years old get in her way. She actually uses it
as fuel, but bigger than that, it's not fuel for her,
it's fuel for anyone who can take inspiration from her story,
which is why she's so public about it. And I
(13:19):
love that people who pay it forward and who shine
that light bright in the sky for us to make
constellations so that we can act on them in service
to others.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
We have to talk about our girl, Catherine Legg. I've
never met a professional race car driver before in my life,
and I am just I love her. I'm blown away
by her her pink elf car. And then just own
the track. It's just it's mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And we were there together and I think we both
cried that day. So of all of the experiences I've
had in my twenty five year journey, I cried more
that day than any other time in my career, out
of love and joy and excitement for what we were doing,
which was serving the underserved in many different ways. So
if I just start with Catherine for a second, and
(14:05):
how emotional she felt being the only woman driver in
that race, but also only the ninth driver in one
hundred and eight year history. So think about how she's
feeling in that moment. And we had the great privilege
of chatting with her beforehand, and I couldn't believe how cool,
calm and collected she was. I'm like, you're about to
(14:26):
go around the track two hundred and thirty one. Yeah,
I had more anxiety than she did. And she looked
at me and thanked me. I said, what are you
thanking me for? Outside of this stuff, the pink color
on the car and the support, what are you really
thanking me for? Because I could see it in her eyes,
and she said, in my entire forty three years, I've
(14:46):
never been invited to be a woman.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh my go.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And we were the first brand where she could let
her femininity shine and she felt complete.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Oh my good. Now you're gonna make me cry.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
When you think about that. We were serving the underserved,
starting with her because all of her sponsorships have always
been masculine stuff in a masculine world. It's tires and
tires and oil and right, so we come in and
we're like, be who you are. And that was a
game changer for her. And then we saw what happened
with the fans and for your audience, who's listening three
(15:24):
hundred and fifty thousand people in one place. And when
I was told that, I still couldn't wrap my head
around it until I saw it in real life. Right,
you had the same reaction. And half of them are women, yes,
but nobody is talking to them. This is almost a
religion for them. They spend a year planning how is
their day going to be at the Indy five hundred,
(15:45):
and they bring coolers and they come with generations and families,
and there's no place for the women to go. There's
nobody talking to them. There's no booth servicing their needs.
They were lined up at our booth for miles. I
had dads, fathers, generations of women falling into my arms, crying,
saying thank you for finally creating a place for us.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Did you ever think, as as that little girl, the
youngest of three, that you would be changing the face
of professional racing one day? Never in a million years,
you'd be building constellations in the sky right, Well, they
must be so proud of your entire family.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
It's truly extraordinary, and you can't do it without a
community of people supporting you. And my family is just
exceptional group of hard working, challenger human beings who have
given me so much might and so much strength and
so much belief in who I am and what I'm
capable of. And then the team I surrounded myself with.
(16:47):
I mean, you know, Patrick, he's like my right hand,
left hand and everything in between, and he's pretty much
the one who's responsible for all this awesomeness. And we
just surround ourselves with really great people. And when really
great people come together with a desire to do great things,
great stuff happens. And that's what we're that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Well, Corey, I've been an ELF user for years and
years and years. But what really kind of reignited me
with the brand was Jennifer Coolidge and your Super Bowl commercials.
Tell us about how that all came about. That was
so amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That was another Constellation building moment. So we had this
incredible power with power Grip Primer, and we needed to
put it on a bigger stage. ELF had outgrown all
the things that we had done before, right, we had
blossomed into this flower that Outkrwitz Garden, and we said, well,
where could we take it? And we moved really fast.
Remember that we're fast, Okay, Yeah, so we were. Our
(17:44):
head of insights called me up and said, we are
a very short distance to becoming the number one skew
in all of mass cosmetics. And I almost passed out
and died. I was like, how is it even possible?
And how far are we? And she said, k boss,
pull another one of those markets stunts. You're there And
I was like, oh yeah, So, so of course it's
(18:07):
like there's no sign. So I called Patrick. I was like, Pat,
we got to figure out what we can do in
a really short amount of time that is going to
get us to that number one position. So let's look
at the calendar, what's upcoming? And the super Bowl was
in three weeks, three weeks, three weeks. Oh my god.
So yeah, when we say so, we went to step one,
(18:31):
which was dream big. Yes, who is the brightest cultural
star in the sky right now who we could attach
to this power grip primer that would make perfect sense
and put it on the biggest stage that there is.
And Jennifer Coolidge was the name we dreamt. So the
(18:51):
other thing we saw, which is not dissimilar to why
we were at the Indy five hundred, is obviously, before
you're going to invest that kind of money, you need
to understand is there an audience ripe for this? So
we looked at the stats at that time it was
one hundred and fifteen million viewers, and we said, okay, well,
how many of them are women?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Half? Half?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Okay, great, there it is again half are women. And
how many commercials are really speaking to women less than
one percent? Oh god. So again we came in to
serve the underserved, and we did it in a playful, humorous,
clever way that obviously made a big impact with you,
who was already a user, and introduced a very large
(19:29):
number of people to the brand. That never knew the
brand before, and it was an incredible moment for us
to recognize the power of serving the underserved.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Okay, let's talk about Billy Jean King and the future
of Billy Jean King and ELF celebrating fifty years of
equal play for equal pay. So what do you have planned.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It's funny when you say that, because when you think
about the commitment to fifty years of celebrating equality in sports,
we ambition to create that in the board room. And
she was so inspirational for us on that journey that
we asked, actually asked her to come along with us.
So she became an integral part of our change the
(20:11):
Board Game initiative. She was serving facts, letting everybody know
about the awful inequalities, because first you have to make
people aware of the problem before you can solve the problem.
And on that journey, as you get closer and you
start talking about possibilities, she brought up to us, you know,
how can we continue this relationship. We're making so much
(20:32):
magic here together, And I said, we want to keep
changing the game and where can we do that? So
we are going to be the sponsor of the Billy
Jean King Cup this November fantastic. And additionally, probably the
part that gets me most excited is there's a power
of Women's Summit for women in sports that we're going
to be partaking in. So it gives us another platform
(20:54):
to really rise up women in sports and to further
this incredible conversation.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Change the board and that you get to help people.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And that's really the part of it, right because when
I think about how we're paying it forward for the
next generations, we want to change the landscape so that
when little girls look up, they're not worried about we
need more women in the boardrooms. They'll already be there.
Go fix another problem, because there'll be plenty more for
(21:24):
you to fix. So I think the key component for
us here is to recognize where do we have the credibility,
the authority and the red carpet hiding in plain sight
like the Indy five hundred, like the Super Bowl, These
places where there is a hunger and an appetite and
(21:45):
a desire that nobody can really articulate because they don't
even realize it until it happens, and then it hits
them over the head and they're like, oh my god,
Elf is here. At the Indy five hundred. Yes, So
that's really what we're focused on. And when I think
about the work we're doing now with the Women's Sports
Audio Network, we couldn't be anymore excited because once again,
(22:05):
the math is not mathing right. So it's crazy when
you think about the fact that only fifteen percent of
coverage goes to women's sports, yet they're fifty one percent
of the audience, and even further than that, eighty four
percent of all sports fans, all genders, say they want
(22:26):
to see more women in sports. So the math is
not mathing. People are not listening, they're not paying attention.
So we are now broadcasting three hundred and sixty five
days a year of women's sports and women's topics and
women's subject matter that will iterate over time to best
serve the needs of this audience that's been underserved.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Corey Marchisoto, you are such a wonderful woman. Thank you
for being here on Women We Love. Come back soon.
I love you so much and keep doing what you're
doing with ELF. You are such a rock start.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Well, you're a woman we adore and thank you for
what you put out into the world because you are
making the world a better place and we appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Thanks. Elf Beauty has a commitment to advancing women in
sports and it goes back since the brand was founded
twenty years ago. They were founded so they could disrupt
the status quo and champion accessibility. They want to open
up the worlds of every eye, lip and face. That's
why ELF is a founding partner of Iheartwomen's Sports and
the exclusive skin and cosmetic partner at the Billie Jean
(23:31):
King Cup, the only global sporting competition named after a woman.
Bringing a strong message of empowerment to the event, we
all win on a level playing field. Learn more at
elfbeauty dot com.
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