It Never Hurts to Have a Conversation | e.l.f. Beauty CEO Tarang Amin

Tarang Amin had already helped grow a company and lead it through a major sale when he began thinking about what to do next. He was then approached about cosmetics brand E.L.F. and initially wasn't convinced. At first, I wasn't interested in color cosmetics to be honest. I thought there were way too many brands, way too fragmented a category, not enough product differentiation. But Amin had a rule that made him take the meeting. I've always had this other saying in my career, which is it never hurts to have a conversation. What he learned changed his mind and convinced him to invest his own family's money in ELF. That decision reflects an approach he still follows today. When people are looking at opportunities, I'm looking at strengths and driving the heck out of strengths is what I'm best at. These are Tarang Amin's Executive Decisions. Tell me a little bit about your origin story because I find it fascinating looking at what happened to you and your amazing family from Africa to the United States. Just tell me about that. Sure. So, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm excited about this as well. Um, my story is an im immigrant story. I'm of Indian ethnicity. Both my parents were born and raised in India. I was actually born in East Africa. My dad used to work in Kenya. spent part of my childhood in Kenya and Uganda and we immigrated to the US when I was a child and um it's like any American dream story. My parents came here to make a better life for us. They worked extremely hard. My dad last job he had wore many hats but the last job was selling uh educational publishing to school systems throughout the Virginiaas and the Carolinas. So he would disappear on Sunday nights, kind of do his sales route, come back Friday nights, and we really decided we wanted to be together as a family. So when I was 14 years old, uh my parents sold our house, took every penny we had, and we bought our first motel on Route 1 in Alexandria, Virginia. Uh we moved right into the manager's apartment and our business model as a families, we'd find these distressed properties, we'd fix them up, uh we're good operators, and we kept building that business out. But that was probably one of the most formative experiences I've had, not only as a teenager, but throughout my business career. You were thrown out of Uganda. Mhm. Uganda was a a terrible place in those days, run by a dictator who was a a terrible human being, Idi Amin. Tell me a bit about that. Was it traumatic for you as it sounds? Well, you know, it was less traumatic than others because my father saw kind of the writing on the wall and it sent my mom and me over earlier. So, we weren't it wasn't as bad as some people experienced where they literally were getting thrown out of the country and the panic there. So, it was better planned obviously just as disruptive. My parents lost everything they had in Uganda. Everything. They lost everything. So, my dad had invested in land uh had their their savings. So they they did come with very little to the states and make a life uh for ourselves. So we I can relate to that part of the experience. But like I said, I think some had it much worse than we did. Um I'd say the there was less trauma and more the shock in being in a completely different culture and a different uh world. There were very few people that look like me. Uh growing up uh even early in my business career. uh I'd probably be the only brown person in the room. And uh so I'd say that was more the part to get used to of uh being an American but somehow feeling like an outsider. And so a big part of my I think professional career is making sure I gave opportunities to others that uh may have not felt welcome. And one of the things I learned early on and you know I give my parents a lot of credit that you can be anything you want to be. you can do anything that you want to do. All it takes though is really hard work and determination and uh and certainly there was no better proving ground of that than the motel because to give you a little bit more of a visual story on that, it was 1979 when we bought our first property. I think interest rates in the US was were about 18%. Um I developed an intuitive sense of what cash flow was at the age of 14. I knew every single dollar that was coming out, every single dollar that was going out. I knew what our mortgage payments were. I knew uh what our expenses were. I uh it it was an incredible fullyfledged businessman at 14 years of age. And he had to be. It was by necessity cuz I knew everything we had as a family was in this property. If this property didn't work, I mean there was no alternative. So you it was really about making it work. I mean it was so funny. I later, I mean many years later, I went to get my MBA and I learned uh the definition of economic profit and I was like, you know, I actually intuitively knew what economic profit was. I got the whole thing of your cash flows and your profits relative to your assets. Uh any motel owner understands that any property owner generally understands that. And so it was fabulous. I mean, at the time it was hard work. It was at the time it was stressful as a 14-year-old knowing that, you know, this had to work. There was no alternative. Uh but you know I I learned so much just watching my father. So Tarang you were at Duke and then you did your MBA at Duke. I want to know why you even bothered with that because you were already very very qualified in business before that as well. You knew all of this stuff as well. You just didn't have the formal piece of paper to say that you knew it as well. Why couldn't you just be an entrepreneur without going to Duke and without that formal education? Well, my family and my parents big believers in education. They themselves were highly educated. You had your education. You got it working and knowing about cash flows and knowing about profits and knowing about interest rates at 14 years of age. Well, I think one of the things my parents instilled in me was a real sense of curiosity and of learning and the passion of learning. Uh my dad had multiple degrees including a law degree. He was a practicing lawyer. He himself had a tough child childhood having his lost his both his father and his brother at a young age. He ended up having to suspend his college studies to take care of their family farm. So their story and yet at the same time he was still determined to get an education to finish his studies uh to learn and they instilled that in me that that there was real power in knowledge in learning and that's actually the key to be anything that you want to be and they wanted more from me frankly than the motel. Uh my parents absolutely hoped I'd either be a doctor or an engineer. So I went in with a biomedical engineering major and I don't know about two or about 3 years into it, it was my junior year, I realized, you know, I'm just not intellectually as interested in some of the subjects. So much to the shock of my parents, I changed my degree uh after my junior year to international policy, public policy. And they, my mom was just heartbroken cuz she thought, "Oh my god, he's going to, you know, we worked this hard in our lives to give them a better life and what's he going to do?" I had an interview only this week for this series with a guest whose mother refused to admit that their son was going to an investment bank and wanted their son to be a lawyer. Uh, and she went around telling everyone he's he's practicing law at Goldman and Sachs rather than he's an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. She refused to admit that he wasn't going to be a lawyer. I can I can top that story because after uh my MBA, I joined Proctor and Gamble in brand management. My mother could never understand what brand management was. She was like, "Well, you make the advertising." I'm like, "No, we have agencies." She's like, "Well, you make the product." "No, we we we I don't." In the end of the day, she was like, "What do you do?" It's like, you know, well, I help direct all these other areas so we can move the business forward. She was at a loss. she just couldn't understand why I would do this. Over the years, as my titles got better, I thought she understood what I did. Um, but sure enough, I was an executive at Clorox, I got appointed to their, uh, leadership committee, which was their highest level. And my wife was talking to my mother and she said, "Oh, uh, Tarang had a very important promotion today." Uh, without missing a beat, my mother said, "You guys need to open up a subway." And and and my my wife said, "You mean like the the sandwich shop?" She's like, "Yeah, uh you can't get ahead working for someone else. You need your own business." My sister has three Subways and she's doing extremely well. I asked my wife, "What did you say?" She goes, "I was dumbfounded. What am I supposed to say? She thinks she thinks running a Subway would be much higher in elevation than what you what you've been doing for the last 20 years." I was so happy I went straight into the CEO's office and I say, "Hey, listen. I want to I want to thank you and the board for this appointment." But just so you know, if it doesn't work, I have a plan B. Mom's got my back covered here. I love it. Mothers are amazing. Look, I find that in my small way doing the job I do, if I'm not curious, I'm not engaged and I'm not learning and I'm not doing well at my job. Curiosity is so important for anyone listening to this who wants to build their career and carry on. Never ever ever rest on your laurels. Never just chase the money. Never just chase the titles. No, that's right. And I think people sometimes get confused as a CEO, you're in charge. I often say the more powerful impact you can have are the questions that you ask, right? I can direct people to do things, but by asking questions and seeking that learning, not only are the decisions better that we make, but it actually teaches along the way. One of my favorite meetings I do is a product review we do every two weeks. It it talks to our speed. It's my meeting. Uh but I make that an open ticket. Uh I remember my CMO when she first came in, she was horrified cuz she came from Prestige. She's like, "These are the nuclear codes to the company. How are you letting anyone in?" And I was like, "Two reasons. one, anyone looking at me uh would not confuse me as being a makeup enthusiast. So, I am not as close to our community as our incredibly talented team. And two, the whole point of that meeting are the questions that I ask both in terms of what I learn to make better decisions, but how it teaches the rest of the organization what we're going to do. So, I that's the one meeting I love looking at the chat field on. Uh, I there's the one meeting that we will do live, but I will have my iPad and I'll be going through on this uh the Zoom chat uh to see what and I'll just throw out a bunch of open-ended questions. Tell me why our molting lip balm is is phenomenal. What's what's so great about this formulation? Tell me about this formulation. Tell me how it's different than the prestige item. Tell me why $9 is the right pricing. The prestige item is $26. Why can't I charge 12? Why can't I charge 14? having that inclusive nature uh and that like again I said curiosity the questions make really propel our entire company. I want to just revisit a couple of points about your amazing 12 years I think at Proctor and Gamble 1991 to 2003. Mentors? Franco Spedini um I I'll tell the story I was I was actually even before I was a brand manager as an assistant brand manager P&G would have these big reviews there'd be I don't know it seemed like 100 people in them and uh someone relatively junior you'd be off on the side and you'd be observing the meeting and it was a sector president uh their leadership and the GMs and uh and you'd going through and the sector president would be asking a few questions and I'd have thoughts in my head and there's this man softspoken man uh a little bit further down the table. He would say something and I was like, you know, I was thinking that same thing. And um and and this happened a few times and then I noticed that the sector president who was the person who was all in power was quite differential to this man. So I turned over to someone. I said, you know, who who is that? Who is that man? Well, that's Franco Spedini. He's the head of R&D for beauty. And I was like, you know, it he really some of the things he said really sparked to me. It seemed like there's I I bet you I could learn from him. So I picked up the phone and I called his office. The people I was working with freaked out cuz R&D was an empire at P&G. And they wanted to know, oh my god, why are you calling Franco Spedini? What's going on with him? I'm like, I'm just calling for some advice. And that's the way I framed it to his assistant. And I went and I saw him and he said, you know, in all the years, he'd been at P&G probably about 30 years by then. He said, um, no brand manager had ever actually called me up for to ask me advice. And I said, 'Well, that seems that seems a shame. Crazy. And it ended up being one of the most product. And it was true because a lot of times people seek their mentors in their own functional lines or their own reporting lines. And this is the way it should work. And I always found the best mentors came from who did you actually have affinity from? Who did you think you could learn from? Who did you connect with? and those often aren't people anywhere near your direct line. And that was very much the case with Franco. He helped me tremendously in terms of my understanding of R&D. I remember at the time I was like, you know, I'm telling the group and that I need better um conditioning performance and they're not really listening to me. He's like, "Oh, you know, when you talk that way, you sound kind of stupid." I'm like, "What? What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, let's talk about conditioning." You said you want better conditioning. I have fine hair. It's a parabola in terms of your conditioning. You can have a certain amount of conditioning, then after a while it's too much. I've got normal hair. I've got a different curve. I've got thick hair. I've got a different curve. So, when you talk that way, you sound stupid to the people that you're working with. He taught me. Well, how would you ask that question? How would you talk? How would I get after a higher overall rating? Franco was absolutely instrumental because it was outside the the norm. And you left Proctor and Gamble in 2003. You went to the chloric company till 2011. Then you were at the Shift Nutrition Group um up until 2014. I'm sorry to jump over that period of your career, but I want to get to ELF if I may as well. Why did you become the CEO of ELF in 2014? Um I became a CEO of ELF because I became CEO of Shiff Nutrition uh back in 2010 and that was my first public company CEO role. Uh we built that company up from about 180 million to a billion and a half selling it to Reckitt Benckiser. So it was a successful outcome that proved I could be a CEO uh that could be successful at it. And so, had you always wanted to be a CEO? You know, I did. There was an element once I got into business. Once I got into business, I wouldn't say in my motel business, all I wanted to do was get to the next week. But in uh I think once I got into brand management and went uh um into general management, I it definitely was an aspiration. Uh but I would say the success we had at Shiff Nutrition uh particularly after the sale to Reckitt Benckiser um made it such that every and I had a fully formed team. Everyone wanted to talk to every private equity company in the world wanted to talk to us about looking at uh another business and then I was going to in this particular case say uh take the proceeds I made uh at cuz you know we came as as we mentioned pretty humble roots was upper middle class but working Shiff Nutrition wasn't my was probably my first real big payday and we said you know uh I learned early on the power of ownership um my next company. We're going to re we're going to invest what we made in Shiff. So, it's going to be really important what the next company is cuz we're going to put our own skin in the game. Yeah. And um and I took a number of meetings, saw a number of businesses, uh one private equity company said, "Hey, there's this company, E.L.F. Cosmetics coming up for sale. The founders are putting up for sale. Um you know, take a look." And at first, I wasn't interested in color cosmetics. To be honest, I thought there were way too many brands, way too fragmented a category, not enough product differentiation. But I've always had this other saying in my career, which is it never hurts to have a conversation. So I said, "All right, well, let's take the meeting." And I fell in love with the business. And and what I fell in love with was this was a father and son entrepreneur who created this brand back in 2004 with this crazy idea of selling cosmetics over the internet for $1. Everyone thought they were nuts. Uh this is pre iPhone people didn't think he could sell cosmetics over the internet and he certainly could make money at a dollar but they were incredibly frugal, incredibly scrappy. Uh Allen and Joey Shamah. Uh they created this real disruption in the industry. Uh lived hand-to-mouth for the first few years online only as a digital business. Then a couple viral waves where there are rumors. I think the first one was Bloomingdales was going to buy this brand, make it a house brand and jack up all the prices. So, you better get your Elf. I think they've went from a couple hundred orders to um almost 200,000 orders. The same rumor happened a couple years later with Nordstrom. Uh I got involved when they had just gotten distribution at Target, the large national retailer in the US. Um I love I love the value orientation of the business. I love the digitally native roots. I love the spirit of disruption. Uh but because we're going to invest my own family's money into it, I really did diligence on the company. So, I remember the first call I made was to Christina Hennington who ran beauty at Target, who I knew from previous lives. I said, "Christina, tell me about this brand." And she, "Oh, we love E.L.F." Like, I never even heard of it. Like, what do you love about it? She's like, "Well, our buyers are always looking at interesting new brands to test. We'd seen all this buzz virally on E.L.F." And so, she wanted to test it. At first, I was reluctant cuz I thought it would trade down. At that time, E.L.F. was the average unit retails of E.L.F. were $2. and we thought it would trade down the Maybellines, the L'Oreal Parises, the CoverGirls of the World. But I let her test it. And then because they have that guest relationship managed database, um she said, you know, we found it didn't trade down those brands. It brought in this entirely different user base. They were young, they were diverse, their core enthusiast in the category. Instead of buying that one CoverGirl foundation, they could buy five or six different ELF products. Um, but the two things she said that were compelling that made me invest my family's own money into buying this company. Number one, she said, "And they bring me real insight." And I couldn't understand it because this was a small little private company, $100 million of sales. Uh, there's no one with the word insight anywhere near their name. I said, "Christina, tell me more." She said, "Well, every year L'Oreal, PNG, Cody, and others come with their big trends decks, their big launch plans. Um, and you and I both know new item hit rates are less than 50%. I'm the one left holding the bag as merchants. Instead, this little company comes and tells us exactly what's selling on their website, what the reviews are, what they think will work, and they proactively change out 20% of my assortment each year, which having been a consumer for so long, I thought was brilliant. I was like, "Oh my god, that is actually real insight. That is really great." But the most compelling thing she told me is, "Oh, by the way, it's the most most productive brand I carry." And I said, "Oh, you mean on a unit basis cuz it's really inexpensive." She said, "No, on a dollar per linear foot, which is the key measure of retail productivity, it outsells everything." And of course, we went back, looked at the data, and it did. And my head was racing. I was like, the only places this is in distribution is at Target and their own site. Oh my god, this is this is beautiful. We know how to build out distribution. We know how to build out a team. Uh we know how to do the hard work. And then I had a different thesis at the time. My thesis was, you know, this is interesting. They're doing $1, $2, $3. What if we instead focused on the best products in prestige? It would give us a higher price umbrella to still have superior value, but where we could engineer in better quality. And so it was perfect for a p. So to take a a pharmaceutical analogy, you've got these amazingly expensive blockbuster drugs coming up for Payton Cliff and then they're open to generic competition. You're the generic competition of the prestige brands. No, absolutely. With one twist on the pharmaceutical to generics, it's the identical formulation. We always put our twist on it because we always study the prestige item and something we're allowed to do. I'll give you a great example. Uh our in and our community it tells us what they're looking for. So a few couple uh maybe three years ago post pandemic there was a real uh resurgence in the lip category. Everyone wanted to express themselves. They wanted bold looks of color. And so there was a prestige brand that had been out there for 10 years. An item they had a lip oil. Can you blew up uh Dior? I can I can miss it. Dior for more than 10 years had these lip oils. $36 in the market. All of a sudden they went viral. They they just took off. Everyone needed this bold burst of colors, this um incredible u glossy finish. Uh those took off. Our community will come to us and say, "Hey, E.L.F. help us out. We want a lip oil, but we can't afford." The community came to you. You didn't go to the community. No, the community comes to We have a a terrific relationship with our community. We are big on every major platform from Tik Tok to to Roblox and and uh we have an open dialogue with our community. The community will direct message us. They will engage with us. They'll come um I do know different story here for later, but I end up doing Tik Tok lives where I get set up as you got the big boss on now. Tell them what you want. And our community is not shy. So the community came to us and basically said we want lip oils but we can't afford $36. Help us out. And what we'll do is we'll we'll study the product. We'll basically look at it and we'll say what do people love? They love that incredible burst of color. They love the uh glossy payoff. But then we'll also find out what don't they like? And in this particular product for some consumers, it dried out their lips. When we introduced our lip oil, we did a few important things. It was a completely different hydrating formula, a much bigger doe foot, which is what the applicators cost, and an $8 price point instead of 36. It went viral instantly, and we don't have to do anything. We never will compare to the prestige item um uh in that way, which is also different than the generic example of, hey, this is the same as. We we don't do that, but we don't have to. The next week there were probably a thousand Tik Tok videos of consumers going, "I'm trying. I'm doing my own testimony." Tik Tockers, the Roblox generation, the influencers, they're telling you the product that they want. You're going off of your R&D team and your branding team and coming up with a product and then giving it straight back to them at a cheap price point. That is the USP of ELF. That is that is it's it's community-led. It's co-creating with our community, seeing what our community wants. Now, we have a three-year pipeline. are because our team represents the communities we serve. Our team has many of these insights already because they are our consumers and so they will be doing a pipeline and then what we often do is the teams often thought of some of these ideas. We then because of our speed can move them up. Another example last year same thing I went on a Tik Tok live community came on said hey uh Prestige brand has these bronzing drops but they're $39. We can't afford $39. I I'll look on the thing and it's like, "Oh yeah, you guys want bronzing drops?" Cuz I'm looking at the chat. 20 20 chats in, they'll be like, "No, no, boss, man. We want them now." I'll come off traumatized. Call my head of R&D and say, "Please tell me we have traumatized." Yeah, absolutely traumatized. And basically say, "Hey, do we have bronzing drops in our pipeline?" She say, "Yes, we do." Oh my god, thank God. I'm thank God you guys have been working on it. When is it coming out? She's like, "Uh, 18 months." I'm like, "Oh, no. No, I cannot get yelled at by our community. I cannot have the mask or something and wait 18 months to give it to him. It has to happen now. I have two daughters. One's a young teenager, one's nearly an adult. They use a lot of product. They use ELF products amongst others. I think that's fair to say. I worry that when they were both younger, and one of them still is young, that they're using a lot of E.L.F. products, they're using a lot of other makeup products. And the advice out there from a lot of people is kids just need a moisturizer occasionally or they need sun cream. They do not need E.L.F. products. They do not need to have a routine. They do not need to be instructing their mother how to apply makeup, which is something that you and I have talked about off camera as well. that generation teaching an older generation how to do the makeup rather than the other traditional way around. Why why is it okay for my 13-year-old daughter to use your products when a lot of advisers say she just needs sun cream? Well, you know, it's ironic when I became CEO of ELF Beauty, uh my daughter Priyanka um uh went to Berkeley uh political economy real believer in injustice. She it was another proof point the world wasn't just she said dad my entire life you told me I don't need makeup and then they make you CEO of a makeup company life's not fair right so that's uh I'm starting with that perspective of early on I was very much of the same uh mindset of and and by the way I I'm I'm 100% believe everyone needs moisturizer everyone needs SPF uh needs protection from the sun uh and that's something we absolutely tell and that's why we have our sunouchables line on elf that's I have our holy hydration line as we go through at the same time who am I to tell someone how they should express themselves or not. Um the reality of our category of color cosmetics of skin care of beauty on the whole is it's all about self-expression and that expression really drives a lot in terms of both self-worth value in terms of what they want to do or lack of selfworth Tarang because you've got influencers you've got them showing kids how to do makeup you've got filters which are distorting the end product in many ways as well. Do you not think it's putting pressure on these young people and maybe affecting their mental health? You know, I would say the there is certainly cases of that. I'm not going to disagree. Uh and I think, you know, and I think that gets wrapped up in the whole use of social media, too much use of social media, peer pressure, everything else like that. I would say there's a broad range of looks and expression. So you're talking about a self-expression that is way over-the-top mega influencer multiple reg routine of 12 14 different products. If you look at ELF our strength is in everyday complexion. These are the things I need to look natural frankly every day. Our strength we're our strength is primers. Everyone can use a primer. Even a younger consumer can use a primer. It helps with the adhesion of the your next products. Everyone can use a concealer. Uh especially if you have acne and uh and you're worried about your own expression there. Everyone can use our core. If you look at where key strengths are as a product, talked about in moisturizers, talked about sunscreen in skincare is our biggest franchise within our skincare range. So we feel really good about our approach to beauty and in terms of what you can use as you go through. Uh but like any category I can point to you you throw out any cate there's there could be abuse in any category they can be it on the whole I would argue it's it drives greater good than any harm mainly because the importance of self-expression at again these ages we're talking about people that are going through quite a bit uh as I think about both adolescence and beyond in terms of how they're doing it developing that confidence developing that uh sense of selfworth I would say is important I'd say the bigger piece that we worry about is the younger generation has really embraced skincare and we we love that for an elf from an elf standpoint uh because all of our formulations the last thing I should have said is we have a higher standard because because we are appealing to younger consumers. We have a standard of elf clean. If you look at our formulations, every one of our products, they are vegan. They're double certified cruelty-free by both Peeta and Leaping Bunny. They're E.L.F. clean, which means we don't formulate with 2900 ingredients. And just for perspective, in the US, the FDA only bans 11 ingredients. So, we feel great about our formulations, the efficacy and the safety of those formulations really at any any age. Tang, I'll just come up one more time at this one as well. And it's not an assault on you. It's just one of the accusations that have been raised. I I looked in my research at Elf Up and Glow Up, which is, correct me if I'm wrong, but one is about a creating a beauty empire, the first game. The second is about more about putting on the makeup, what you're going to look like when you glow up, so to speak. I was talking about my teenage daughters. That's one thing. What about younger kids even playing these games thinking makeup is essential at a younger and younger age? I don't, you know, look, I don't think I think that's just the reality of consumer behavior. I don't think it has anything to do with anything other than consumers are way more savvy than when we grew up. And and I'll use the example um if you it used to be moms used to teach their daughters about makeup. My wife is an immigrant as well. When she came to this country, she didn't know much about makeup. How did she learn about makeup? She went to a department store counter, got a makeover, got instructed in terms of how we do that. That's not how the younger generation learns these days. They learn through online. They are that's one of the reasons why we not only we number one amongst Gen Z, Gen Alpha millennials, we're picking up more Gen X. And if you take a look at how are we picking up more Gen X, the daughters are going to their mothers going like, "Mom, why are you using Actually, a bigger travesty is why are you paying $50 for your foundation when that's hands up? That happens in my house." Yeah, it happens in my house. Um, let me move on. We've got a limited amount of time. DEI is not popular in corporate America at the moment on the surface. It's being taken out of annual reports very often because the political environment is against it and companies do not want to be a target for the administration elsewhere. But according to what I've seen from your company, building diversity and inclusion is a strategic imperative for ELF at a time when companies are hiding their DEI initiatives and a lot of them are carrying on. they're just not talking about it anymore as well. Are you actually doubling down and saying DEI for both your employees and indeed your clients is actually a really good thing? You know, we've always believed that diversity inclusion is a really good thing. So, are you making a political statement by saying it's not a political statement? It's a statement of who we are. Our mission is to make the best of beauty accessible to every eye, lip, and face. And the word every is really important. We're for everyone. Uh we're big believers from a competitive standpoint that having a team that reflects the communities you serve is a competitive advantage. I learned long ago in business that to seek out strengths that if you can seek out strengths in the business but also seek out strengths in people. Well, if you have a diverse team and everyone's leveraging their unique superpower, the entire team is stronger. They outperform homogeneous teams every single time. They outperform homogeneous teams every time. and you've worked for big big American women every every and go through across industries whatever it is a a diverse team will outperform a homogeneous team. Absolutely. And there's a ton of research on this. You don't even have to take my word for it. I can tell you over 35 years of being in the consumer space. Every team I've had, I went out of my way to really assemble a diverse team, really seek out each person's individual superpowers, and have that team work together. I'll get to high performance teamwork in a minute. But in the last 20 years, I've been perfor uh practicing high performance teamwork. Every one of my teams has outperformed teams that didn't have that orientation in terms of inclusion. And so, and then and again, like I said, you don't have to take my word for it because there's a ton of research that shows you are a stunningly successful businessman who's had enormous experience in corporate America. Why isn't corporate America standing up for DEI? Well, you know, I think look, there's part of the the political rhetoric. One of the things we have an advantage is we actually never had a DEI program. We never had quotas. Many of the things that are being attacked. It was more fundamental than that. We believe representing the community you serve is smart business. It's common sense. We believe having a board that has that is diverse is common sense. And so for us, maybe we have an advantage because that's authentically who we've been for 22 years is for every eye, lip, and face for believing in having inclusion as a key part of our business strategy. Um, and so for us, there was a leg up where it wasn't an it wasn't a corporate initiative. It was more fundamental than that. It's who we are. It's just your DNA. Yeah. Um, couple more questions. Your time is very valuable. What are you best at and what are you worst at as a CEO? What where do you need to work hardest on? Because you you've always got curiosity. You're always learning. You've said that. What are you really good at? I know that's sometimes hard to say. And what do you actually need to really work on? Yeah. So, I'm really good at leveraging strengths, seeking out people's unique strengths, seeking out strengths in the business, uh drive putting them together in a way that drives advantage. That's been like the one unifying theme for me over time. when people are looking at opportunities, I'm looking at strengths and driving the heck out of strengths uh is what I'm best at. And uh and assembling these high performance teams and it's really based on looking at the strengths and how do you how do you drive performance? Um I'd say the part I'm working on and I'll probably be working on till the rest of my days is I'm inherently impatient. Um and so practicing greater patience, practicing greater peace uh is I think uh one of the things that's always going to be an opportunity for me. Now some there's some benefits to it. We have a thing called elf speed uh which talks about our ability to move much faster than the rest of the industry. Some of that comes from my inherent lack of understanding of time where I'm inherently impatient where it's like if we talked about something last week and we talk again this week I'm like oh my god we're still working on that. I don't want to become a big bureaucratic company. Get on with it. Let's go. Uh but then there's another part of me that says give it a moment and uh and and make sure that we're I'm taking that. Then the final obvious question is how do you find peace in your life? How do you find calm? How do you this high-powered businessman at a high-powered company? How do you find the balance? You know, for me uh last week I celebrated uh my wife and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary. Congratulations. And so my calm is uh hiking with her in in in the hills in the San Francisco Bay area or along in Piedmont where we live uh which is quite hilly and there's a peace to that and uh a serenity and I'd say being out outdoors being hiking um spending time now with our two grandkids uh is uh uh both exhausting and a and a point of serenity. Um, it's been a real really great conversation. I've loved learning more about you and E.l.f. and your journey. Thank you so much indeed. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining me on Executive Decisions. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Before you go, click on that follow or subscribe button. And I'd love to hear from you. So, please leave a comment or a review. I read them all. On the next episode, I'll be speaking to the CEO of Morning Star, Kunal Kapoor. I had another competing offer and uh everybody close to me thought I should take that job including my parents. Uh no one had heard of Morning Star at that time. I'm looking forward to it. We'll see you then.