The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Price: Lack of Generational Wealth Drove Backlash to Carol's Daughter Sale
“I realize that as a group of people within this world, 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 …”
Big acquirers buy profitable businesses with strong margins, not struggling ones
“A lot of people think that you know, you're not doing so well, so they pick you up for a song, and it doesn't work that way. You have to be profitable, you have to be doing well, you have to have good profit margins, and they have to see growth coming from you…”
Deferring to veteran executives was perceived as founder weakness by Lisa Price
“I decided that I was going to take the position of, I'm not gonna sit at the head of the table, I'm gonna sit at the table with everyone Because there's so much that I need to learn, and unfortunately, that was perceived as a weakness, and it was perceived as …”
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…”
Price: Bootstrapping breaks at $2M in sales; scaling requires outside capital
“There comes a point, you know, 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. And that's when investment was definitely needed because there was some winging i…”
Price: Generating customer demand is harder than fulfilling backlogged orders
“What if you didn't have the orders? That seems to me like it would be the harder part to kind of make people be interested and make people purchase. He says, you have the orders, you have their credit card numbers. As soon as you get the stuff made, you'll get…”
Carol's Daughter website crashed following appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show
“Our website actually crashed. We told the people that were hosting it, it's gonna be a lot of traffic. Oh, we're ready. They weren't ready. But we were still able to capture a lot of orders, capture a lot of email addresses, and it was a good build, but like a…”
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.”
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…”
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: 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”
Price: Jay-Z and Will Smith invested in Carol's Daughter
“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.”
Lisa Price launched Carol's Daughter with an initial $100 investment
“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…”
Lisa Price funded Carol's Daughter's first storefront with 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 aun…”
Price: Carol's Daughter site traffic jumped from 37 to 17,000 on Oprah
“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.”
Price: Carol's Daughter had about 42 employees when acquired by L'Oréal
“By the time we were acquired by L'Oreal, we had about 42 employees.”
Lisa Price committed to Carol's Daughter full-time due to childcare costs
“In 1996, I was, ah, pregnant with my first son, Forrest. He's now 22, but he was born in March of 96, and I basically looked at my schedule and figured out that if I tried to continue working along with trying to take care of a newborn, I would basically have …”
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 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: 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 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 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: Job satisfaction outside of entrepreneurship unlocked at-home creative energy
“And I think because I was very happy at what I was doing with work, When I had my downtime, and I was not at work, I didn't have that desperate feeling that you feel when you're like, oh god, I'm finally not at work, and I just want to relax, and I just want t…”
Price: Carol's Daughter voicemail filled up every ninety minutes in 1996
“You know, the voicemail box would fill up every hour and a half.”
Price: Carol's Daughter expanded its product line based on customer requests
“And if I was out selling somewhere, and someone asked me about something, if I didn't know how to make it, I figured out how to make it. So I learned how to make bath salts. I learned how to make body scrubs, different types of moisturizers. I figured out how …”
Price: Carol's Daughter scaled early sales through word-of-mouth referral perks
“It was literally one woman telling another woman, and somebody always brought a friend with them. And if you brought a friend, you know, get a free gift or, you know, something off. So it was all of that grassroots type of stuff.”