Aug 6, 2018 · 41m · how-i-built-this
Carol's Daughter: Lisa Price (2018)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
This episode of 'How I Built This' chronicles how Lisa Price transformed a kitchen-based hobby making natural skincare products into Carol's Daughter, a pioneering multi-million-dollar beauty brand acquired by L'Oreal.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 25.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.8 Guest teaching 1.8 Guest disagreement 0.4 Guy pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 27:05 Refuting the massive expansion narrative
Lisa immediately pushes back against Guy's characterization of massive annual store openings, clarifying that growth was deliberate and measured.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 9:20 Clarifying employment timelineGuy presses on whether Lisa was still juggling full-time television production alongside her weekend market hustle.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:00 Educating on systemic generational wealthLisa educates Guy and the listeners on why Black entrepreneurs face unique pressures regarding corporate exits due to historical disparities in generational wealth.
Guy holds their own ▶ 1:18 Contextualizing the L'Oreal acquisitionGuy demonstrates comprehensive industry knowledge, framing Carol's Daughter within the broader cosmetics industry and L'Oreal's portfolio.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| From Brooklyn Kitchen to Global Cosmetics Acquisition | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy introduces the acquisition of Carol's Daughter by L'Oreal and guides Lisa through her initial career on The Cosby Show. Lisa warmly reflects on how much that career meant to her. | |
| Fragrance Layering, Prince's Influence, and Kitchen Formulations | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Lisa explains how Prince's grooming habits inspired her fascination with fragrance layering and basic cosmetics chemistry. Guy asks curious, conversational questions about melting ingredients in her kitchen. | |
| Mother's Encouragement, Baby Food Jars, and the Brand Name | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lisa clarifies timeline details when Guy assumes she was still full-time on The Cosby Show during her initial flea market sales. She also educates Guy on how dry skin affects women of color specifically. | |
| The Oprah Epiphany: Defining Passion and Going All-In | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Lisa recounts watching an episode of Oprah that helped her realize passion meant being willing to wake up in the middle of the night to do the work. Guy listens attentively as she describes the transition from hobby to business. | |
| Leaving Television, Motherhood, and Overcrowded Home Sales | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Lisa details balancing early motherhood with leaving television production and operating a rapidly growing home-based business. The interaction is entirely cooperative and narrative-driven. | |
| Essence Feature, Industry Word-of-Mouth, and Growing Demand | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Guy reacts with empathy as Lisa recounts opening her first retail storefront and borrowing from family accounts to cover rent deposits. Lisa explains having police check her home due to intense customer foot traffic. | |
| National Spotlight on Oprah and Website Crash | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Lisa describes appearing on Oprah in 2002 and the immense web traffic spike that briefly crashed their server. Guy prompts for operational details while Lisa sets realistic expectations about the immediate financial impact. | |
| Securing Celebrity Investors and Strategic Scaling | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Guy suggests the brand experienced massive rapid store expansion, but Lisa politely pushes back, clarifying that growth was gradual and additional stores did not open until 2005 after bringing on investors. | |
| Remembering Carol: A Mother's Calming Business Wisdom | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Lisa shares a touching memory of her mother Carol helping her reframe business overwhelm into manageable problem-solving. Guy listens empathetically without challenging her perspective. | |
| Navigating Community Backlash and Generational Wealth | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Lisa offers a thoughtful, educational analysis of why community members criticized the L'Oreal sale, explaining historical barriers to generational wealth in the African American community. | |
| How You Built That: Rex Specs Dog Goggles | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy hosts a brief How You Built That segment interviewing Aidan Emelo about creating Rex Specs protective dog eyewear. The narrative is entirely positive and explanatory. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Price started selling homemade skincare at a church flea market in 1993
“I began selling because I had actually gotten something that, you know, looked good and worked And my mother encouraged me to sell at a church flea market in May of 93.”
Price named her company Carol's Daughter after her mother
“I called the company Carol's Daughter. I did have a name, and I called it Carol's Daughter because that's literally who I was. My mom was Carol, and I was her daughter. And the products that I sold, I called them Fragrant Moisture Butter at the time.”
Price launched Carol's Daughter with a $100 investment and baby food jars
“That very first flea market, honestly, was an investment of a hundred dollars between, you know, whatever the table rental was, and the ingredients that I had to purchase to fill the baby food jars that I had, and maybe some flowers, you know, to decorate my t…”
Price: Drugstores in the early 1990s ignored Black skincare needs
“There was definitely a community that needed to be served who was not necessarily being served. It was not something that you could walk into a drugstore and say, oh, look at that. This is fantastic. Great. It wasn't there. It is now, but it wasn't then.”
Price: Starting a Business Solely for Money Leads to Quitting
“You can't start a business just because you want to make a bunch of money, because it's going to take too long. For you to make any money, and if you're not passionate about it, you will quit before you make any money”
Lisa Price left television in 1996 due to childcare costs
“I left television in 1996 because my son Forrest was due to be born April fifth of that year. And I realized that if I continued to work, I would basically just give my paycheck to a babysitter.”
Essence Magazine ran a half-page feature on Carol's Daughter
“My husband walks into the hospital with Essence Magazine, and I was in the November issue, and I actually had a half-page article with a picture. And my name, which was a really big deal.”
Price funded her first storefront by draining her sons' college savings
“We had some small accounts set up for our sons for their college, and we took it. You know, my boys were very, very young. You know, we took, you know, between their two accounts, I don't know, something like 3500 dollars out of the bank. And then one of my au…”
Oprah mention crashed Carol's Daughter website, surging traffic to 17,000 visitors
“We had our website go from having 37 people in it, and within four minutes of my segment, the audience in the website went from, you know, whatever it was, thirty-something people to 17,000 people. Wow. The website actually crashed.”
Investments from Jay-Z and the Smiths helped Carol's Daughter enter Sephora
“Yes, Jay-Z Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and the investment helped us to open up the additional store but also helped us to get into places like Sephora at the time and then subsequently Macy's.”
Scaling past $1 million in sales requires abandoning improvised operations
“When you start doing a million and a half, 2,000,002 and a half million in sales, where you can't wing it, you know, like things have to be secure.”
Price: Carol's Daughter took on Pegasus Capital Advisors in 2007
“Because in 2007, Carol's daughter took on equity partners with Pegasus Capital Advisors.”
Price: Taking equity partners means the goal is a strategic exit
“So once you take on an equity partner, your goal is to Sell to a strategic partner, and everyone exits happy, hopefully.”
Lisa Price: African Americans Historically Lack Experience With Generational Wealth
“African American people, historically, we have less experience with generational wealth. We may be successful in certain areas, we may have become rich recently, but we don't really know what generational wealth is, and we haven't come up in families That have…”