#140: This One Shift Will 10X Your Business Vision (Most CEOs Miss It!) l Jan Arnold

It transformed the beauty industry, I would say, in the last 50 years. It was one of maybe three major innovations in the industry. And what did it do to our business? It tripled, quadrupled sales.

I'm Alison Maslin, and welcome to The Scarlet Method podcast. If you a CEO or founder and you're ready to take your company to the next level while also living a fuller, richer life, you are in the right place. I've built ten companies over the last 40 years, and I'm here to share the most up to the minute strategies and the biggest needle movers that will truly scale your company. Plus, I'll give you a peek into how we do it over at Pinnacle Global Network, where we help business owners multiply their growth and enjoy the journey along the way.

Okay, my Scarlett friends, let's dive in. CND Creative Nail Design co-founder Jan Arnold is a pioneer in the world of beauty. With a career that has spanned over 40 years, Jana has become an unparalleled leader in the nail industry, specifically championing the nail profession while providing innovative, quality products rooted in nail health, safety and style. Passionately driven to progress in the professional nail category.

Jan stands at the forefront, ensuring this influential spirit is infused in each aspect of the brand. Jan's personal sense of style makes her high fashion wait to see see what she's wearing. She looks amazing today. And when asked about her secret of success, she attributed to thinking big, big ideas, big impact, big passion.

Her company has collaborated with the world's top designers, including libertine, Alexander Wang, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Carolyn Herrera, just to name a few. As a result, nails have become the ultimate fashion accessory around the world. Jan and her team scaled up CND and, ultimately, Revlon. Revlon, acquired the company for 600 million in revenue.

Jan remains a powerhouse. Spokesperson. She is the the brand representative for, CND. And so we are so excited for her to come and share her journey and her secrets with us.

So, Jan Arno, let's give it up for Jan Arnold. I am oh so happy you're here. So good to see you. Hi, everyone.

I'm so happy to be here. And, Yeah, eight years ago, it sure went fast. I know, I remember, yeah, it was so exciting. Like it was yesterday.

That was. That was 2016. Wow. Yeah.

And some of the pins that are here actually did see that presentation in 2016. And and remember but go ahead and have a seat. I think because we have lots of lots of stuff to talk about. Yes, yes.

So much to talk about. Right. You were saying over 40 years, we just celebrated our 45th anniversary on March 31st, and I'm just like, how do you build a brand in the garage? And then 45 years later, you're still having fun, still making it happen, still as exhilarated today as I was back then.

It's I'm not sure I even foresaw that coming, you know. Yeah. And you know what? She.

This is for real. Like I am telling you, Jan is one of the most enthusiastic people and passionate people. And you should love your business. You know, you should be energized by your business.

And so if you don't, then we need to look at that. Something's got to change. So yeah, I've always believed that we communicate with passion, and passion is what persuades, right? If you're passionate about something, if you truly understand it and you believe in it, then when somebody says, tell me about this innovation or tell me about the customers you serve, if you're passionate about it, then it comes from here.

You know, you almost don't even need these notes, you know? Yeah. And I just before we start, I don't know if you can. Can you, can you get up on her nails here and see.

You can see. Let's see if they can do that. I'm not sure. Can you see that.

Look at this. Their artistry I know that they're like, what? Shiny shiny nails. Yes.

Amazing. Well, this is you've created this whole industry and nails have become such an art. And so, you you founded the company in 1979, like you said, you started in the garage, you expanded it regionally, nationally to a global company. And so, first of all, congratulations.

Let's give it up for Janet. Q first of all. And so, what do you what was the spark? I mean, you talked about passion.

What was the spark that really ignited the passion? And then how did that how did that shape things for for the long term? Well, well, my father was a dentist and a chemist. And one day, nail professional, a manicurist was sitting in his chair, and she recognized the odor of a monomer and a polymer, a substance that, dentists use to make crowns and caps in the teeth.

And she said, you know, I'm doing nail enhancements, nail extensions. And back in 79, they were single link polymers. They were thick. They would turn yellow in the sun.

They were not resilient. And my dad said, why don't you give me a sample of whatever you're using and let me investigate it? So he would work by day as a dentist, and then he would go to his laboratory in the garage by night. And what he discovered is that everything that the industry had at the time was a single link polymer.

So he's like, no wonder, no wonder you're having problems. So he submitted for a patent for the first ever cross-linked polymer resin. And then when he got the patent, he came to his five kids and he said, okay, guys, I'm a dentist. I already have a career.

I love doing chemistry at night. But I have this stuff, and it might be important for the nail industry and he said, if any of you are interested in the nail business, any of you want to take this and do something with it from a business point of view, have at it. But I'm out like I don't. I don't want to do it.

And by the way, I'm not going to give you money to do it. I will gift you the patent, but you have to learn the industry, go to a bank, get a loan and build it yourself. So true enough, we were exchanging product with the local beauty college and I learned all about the business. I had worn nail enhancements because I was born with dreadful nails and.

But I learned, so I learned how to do it. We went to the banker, and I did a long, nail enhancement on the banker's pinky. Oh, that was hysterical. And to this day, I'm not sure if he gave us the loan to get us out of the office and get the smell out of his office, or if he really believed in us.

But, we came home with a moderate loan. Dad threw us out of the garage. We started our our first facility. My brother Tommy, who was in high school, was in the warehouse and we went to work learning the innovation, understanding the chemistry under standing that we are a science based company where science informs technique.

Science empowers the nail professional to be able to look at an individual client's need. All of us have different nail types, different lifestyles, different maintenance needs, and and really specifically craft a service to solve that need to offer, a solution for every client. But yeah, and that's it. And that's really, you know, what is it?

The mother of necessity. That's what invention is, is there was a gap in the industry. There was a problem. The nails were not staying on.

It was they were turning yellow. So if you think about in your own industry, where's the gaps. Yeah. Or in your life what are the pain points.

And for us what really drove us is we've got, the preeminent world class laboratory for nail innovation in the world. We have seven scientists, polymer scientists. We have biologists, we have a lab salon. So the turn on for me was the science, the potential of inventing new molecules for different outcomes.

The more we understood the nail professional, the more it it ignited the big ideas. And I'll never forget talking about big ideas. One day we were sitting around with our team and our chemists, and we were saying, what are the pain points that women suffer from as it relates to their nails now? And this was probably back in 2004, 2005, that we really hunkered down on this question like we had asked ourselves that before, but this opportunity was, what is it really all about?

And we realized that if, if a woman or a man, if anyone goes to a salon, has their nails done, let's say they have a beautiful bright red enamel on their nails and they go home and three days later it chips. Three days later, the shine dulls, like when you get a manicure and you pay a lot of money for it. You expect it to delight you for however long the promise is behind the technology. But and then we said, okay, professional manicures.

If something goes wrong, you're really annoyed. But if you're doing your own nails at home, how many times have we tried to apply polish the night before a big presentation and we go to bed and wake up with sheet marks on our nails? Like how devastating. Or to break a nail.

So we went to our chemists and we said, look guys, we've got to solve this problem. We want a polish that actually looks like a polish. It goes on like a polish, but it wears tough like a gel. It's going to be protective.

It's going to last for two plus weeks, but when it's time to remove it, no nail damage. This was really important to us. So believe it or not, three years later our chemists come back to us and they said, all right, Jan, we've got it to go on like polish. It wears for 40 plus days, but it takes a half an hour to get it off.

And we said, no, that isn't going to work. Go back into the laboratory. Believe it or not, two and a half more years to figure out the removal process. So can you imagine in your businesses investing five and a half years not to launch a sparkler, not to launch a firework, but we launched a rocket.

It was a rocket ship. When C and D shellac hit in 2010. I'll never forget that. And this was one of like, we had this huge innovation.

But our biggest mistake is we didn't know how big it was, and we underestimated our forecasting. We scared ourselves, really. And when shellac launched on May 1st, 2010, it crashed our website. It went viral.

Internet was just really getting hot, crashed the internet, and within two months we were sold out of bottles. The caps were gone, the brushes were gone. We were out of inventory for about four months and it was so huge. And think about this.

We had just come out of a major recession, the Great Recession, where it drove, consumers to do their own manicures at home. Many nail pros were going out of business. So. Right is that recession was coming to an end.

We created nail professionals and their clients with this rocket called shellac. And let me just say one thing. And then I want to get into team and leadership and some of those things too, because, you know, and so someone was saying in there, well, this is about startup. I want you guys to understand we are so impulsive as business owners.

We want to. Yes, today. And the thing is, is that and I know this story because I remember you sharing this is you. You wouldn't settle until the product was really like something that had never been done before.

So if you can imagine, you know, because they had been around since 1979, this is early 2000. This is well into the company launching another product. We're talking about scaling here. This was the big scale for you.

But you you kept going back to the laboratory saying, it's not it, it's not it. We've got to find it. And then that really put the company on the map and back then you you're so right. Like we're like, okay, we're almost there.

But if we come out with this revolutionary nail coating, nail polish will last for two plus weeks. And it damages clients nails. Then it's not living up to our mantra of being innovation driven, education driven, and super committed to nail health. Like my dad was a dentist, we learned preventative maintenance.

We learned how to prevent nail damage, to create a coating that would really protect the nail. And yeah, so I think looking back, maybe naivete is a little bliss. Like we so believed that we could get this 100%. Now, can you imagine the finance guys, the advisors by then?

Revlon owned us already. So I'm very proud of the fact that the corporation had the tolerance to endure the five and a half years to not just build a little firework, a little, you know, little sparkler. But they really supported us in taking it all the way. Now, what did it do?

It transformed the beauty industry. I would say in the last 50 years, it was one of maybe three major innovations in the industry. And what did it do to our business? It tripled, quadrupled sales.

It transformed the beauty industry. I would say in the last 50 years, it was one of maybe three major innovations in the industry. And what did it do to our business? It tripled, quadrupled sales.

And I remember back then, someone sharing with me that sales are vanity, man, you can get high on your own momentum when you see the sales rocket ship up. Profits are sanity, so you have to really keep an eye on what you're investing, how many samples we were putting out, what we were doing to really grow the business globally. But cash is king. And so, you know, that was the bottom line that you can believe this momentum.

But after the launch, what's your next move? You know, you know, we're going to fill the pipe for a year, maybe two years. And with shellac, it probably took three years. But had we not gone back into the lab at that time, continuing to innovate, continuing to question.

Yes. Is are we at the top of our game? Yes we are. And I have to I have to say that getting there was maybe more fun than being there.

Okay, that is huge, right? Well, we say it's the journey, not the destination, because you should enjoy the process getting there. But sometimes you feel like I'm so in it and it's so and it's so hard, you know, it can feel that way, but I just I love we're going to get into some team, but I love you sharing that story because here's she was already 20 years in and they were innovating you all whatever your products and services are, you have to constantly be optimizing that.

The world is changing and somebody is going to come out with something bigger and better and brighter. And so it might as well be you. And part of this is really helping you to take the time to allow your brain to open up, to come up with new, new ideas. Now, let's talk about because you you had to have a robust team.

You know, you're talking about the scientists and you know, all the different people that it takes. What were you looking for? What were some of the key attributes you were looking for in your early hiring for those team members? And then some of those strategies as you were scaling globally?

Well, we needed entrepreneurial thinkers. You know, my my brother and I founded our company and I always like to say that I was salt because of the white hair. He was pepper. He literally has dark hair.

And we rarely agreed on much. And so in the early days, I came from the, the creative perspective, from our customer's perspective of what does the nail professional want? What are they feeling? What is the emotion behind it?

My brother was coming from more of the manufacturing, what's feasible, all of the technical things. And we would go to the table with our chemists, with our marketing folks, and we would duke it out. Like for me, building this business, it was about initially creative abrasion. Like I invite creative abrasion.

It's if you don't agree with my position, it almost brings me greater joy than if you say, great idea, Jen, because I want to know what can go wrong. I want to know what we can do better. And we would duke it out. And thank goodness he was my brother.

We could go to dinner that night and hug each other at the end of the day. And because we knew through creative abrasion comes creative collab iteration. Had we not gone through that process. And I'll, I'll share with you.

We didn't think that we were inventing the first ever gel polish. We thought we were inventing something totally different, a soft gel and and lo and behold, we realized, wait a minute, this product is for everyone, not just a niche segment of the marketplace. So. So back to your question.

I want to just because you said something brilliant and Pam wrote it in the chat, creative abrasion creates creative collaboration. Let's quote Jan on that because that is absolutely brilliant. So creative abrasion meaning you're being creative, but you have different perspectives and you're not always going to agree. And I think this is something really important as you're becoming that visionary CEO is you've got to be able to take the input from your team.

If it's always your way or the highway, you're not going to be very creative. You're going to be one sided. Oh, totally. And and I really, really believe in, diversity of opinion, diversity of background.

You know, you might come from the science side or the finance side or the creative side. It is that blend that combination that you have to lean into. And sometimes the little chemist in the corner of the room who's super shy, the more white personalities, super strong, intellectual, they've got the nugget that is going to unleash the answer to finding that, that solution to whatever your challenge is. So I believe that if you call a meeting and it's been difficult during pandemia because we were all on, you know, virtual means, we had to figure out how to communicate virtually.

If you come to a meeting, you are coming with an opinion. And so I don't do all the talking. I don't let whoever's leading the meeting do all the talking. Everyone comes with an opinion or you don't come to the meeting, you're not going to sit there and multitask on my watch.

You know, I want to hear what's wrong with the ideas. And then let's find that solution. Absolutely. Yeah, I love that.

And, you know, leadership, which we're going to talk about leadership over these three days. It can be exhilarating but it can also be challenging. And what would you say I mean, looking back, what do you feel like your leadership style is? Well, I, I'm the visionary.

That's what I do. That's how we built the brand. I have the big I'm. I'm an abstract thinker and a creative so I can look into the future.

I can imagine something, and once I can see it, then I believe I can achieve it. If I can't see it or if it's foggy or there's clouds ahead there. Okay, my vision isn't right. But if I can see a vision, then as a leader, my job is to engage the people I love.

I engage my team. I count on the biting foxes to tell me what's wrong with it, and I have to lean in when they bite at my heels. As annoying as it is, I have to lean into them and but my job is to get them to see my vision. And there have been many, many times when they would listen to my vision and say, Jan, you have lost it.

Like officially you have gone crazy. And I remember the first year of pandemic 2020. I mean, we do these huge trade shows all around the world and we couldn't do this shows I'm an IT touch business. You know, nail professionals are eyeball to eyeball with their clients.

They're touching their their clients hands. How am I going to do my work if I can't be face to face with my customers? And so what we decided to do is launch an event called nail athon. And we had a studio, on the East Coast.

We had another one on the West Coast. And my idea and they all thought I was crazy, is to make it a 24 hour nail athon where we would spotlight nail professionals, all the leaders from around the globe. 24/7. So no matter what time zone you're in, no matter where you are, you're going to see a juicy segment during Nelson.

Well, the team said, we love the idea of Nelson. We love like, you know, casting the spotlight on all the superstars. But 24 hours, it's a little cuckoo. So we ended up doing, a nine hour event.

It was October of 2020. We sold about $100,000 worth of product through nail athon, and the objective was not even driven by sales. It was about messaging and connect. And actually, we did have a new product we were launching.

But, but it was it was a, for me, a great example of having a big vision, selling the vision, getting creative. Now, had I gone and said, let's do like a two hour event, like, let's make it juicy for the Nail Pro probably would have been an hour event, but the fact I wanted it 24 hours at least we got the nine hour event and it was successful. Yeah, exactly. And I love that you just came up with this idea and brought it to the team.

How? And that's the fun part. If when you can get into that creative space. Otherwise you're always just reacting to what is going on instead of being proactive to drive the business forward.

Now we do not compete with our competitors. That's another one of my mantras. I, I probably should know more about what they do. Although team members keep an eye on it.

But as a visionary, my eye is on the future. My eye is on technology, my eye is on those consumer pain points to come up with the creative ideas to solve those issues. If my competitors are doing some some things, great, I for me, I don't waste my energy on it because I want to be number one. I want to be excellent at innovation, and I want to keep launching those rockets.

And that's what we're known for. Yeah. Incredible. Now, as you've been launching the rockets, have there been in your leadership journey?

I'm sure that there have been where you had to make a difficult decision that maybe it was a hard decision that you had to make or maybe even a painful decision, but influenced, you know, had a big impact on the company. Well, for everyone, our, all of our female as well as our male participants, if you're getting your nails done when you go to the salon today, you're seeing because of shellac, you're seeing the light cure unit, like, an LED lamp sitting on the table of the nail professional's desk.

Shellac sort of started that wave of like, durable gel products, both gel polish, gel extension materials, swampers that can change the illusion of the nail. And it took us, I want to say, probably 20 years to calibrate, the use of these light cure lamps with the photo initiators in the chemistry to guarantee, correct curing, as well as correct removal to prevent nail damage. Now, our very first light cure for a was probably 30 years ago. It was ahead of its time.

We didn't have the right intelligence. We were really excited about it because we were the visionaries behind it, but it wasn't quite right. And back then we were a private corporation. We had hired outside board of directors, a guy for international sales, a marketing expert, a sales expert, and, and we were kind of leaning on them for advice.

It turns out that Solar Beam was not a success. We had to take the the machines back. We ate $1 million that year was the loss. And but how we recovered is we thought, okay, big lesson learned.

It was before its time. We had too many projects on the docket. We were getting a little high on our own momentum, and what we learned from that is innovation, discipline, and deepening our research and development from a field perspective. And maybe the biggest lesson fewer, bigger, better.

We were doing too many things all at the same time and not doing the one thing that could have been huge way back then. We we didn't do it to the ultimate that it could have been done. And quite frankly, we were ahead of our time. Took 20 years to get it right.

Yeah. Amazing. For those of you that are impatient. Yes.

Anyone here? But I would say to what you were talking about. And I used to be so guilty of this. I'm so much better now.

But I had one time, an employee that said to me, Allison, you are like a red Ferrari. You are running so fast, and we're just running so fast to keep up with you. And my first thought was, can't you just run faster? You know, that was my first thought.

It was. I didn't say it, but that's what I was thinking. But I realized that it was actually we were spinning out as a company. We were going in too many directions.

And I think that's what we're going to do over the three days. We're going to build out your strategy because when you're strategic on not only the what, but the when are you doing it, you know, that makes all of the difference. Well, and the other thing we learned when I'm talking about fewer, bigger, better, it sounds easy, but we had to your point, the red Ferrari, we had so many good ideas. We had the world's best chemists in our laboratory.

There was so much we could do to make the nail professional, help the nail professional reach their ultimate success. That we got to eager to make it all happen. And, And when you. Well, here's the big lesson.

When you launch too many things like, let's say we launched Solar Beam, we came out with another iteration of a gel product. We had a new nail polish line. What are we focusing on? You know, are we trying to make light cure technology?

The next big trend, or are we trying to sell more nail polish? And it comes down to that, it sounds ridiculous, but it's like when you're launching too many things all at once, if you and your team don't even know what you're ultimately focused on, then how does your customer know how to decipher what you're sharing with them? So what we've really learned is do it beautifully. Do it perfectly.

Make sure the testing is excellent. It is the one payoff to having a cork. Well, there are a couple having a corporate parent company because we were purchased by Revlon. At Revlon, they have a claims and regulatory department.

It's a whole separate lab. Anything we launch has to go through an outside claims test that costs around $250,000 per focus, and they poke holes every which way. They they really give us the language that we can share with our customers. And, you know, going with the parent company that has that level of diligence.

Now, the reason they have it is they don't want to get sued. I realize it's defensive. For us, we used to proactively to our benefit. It's like claims department, we're spending the money.

Let's push the envelope. That's how deep. See how deep we can get these claims. And that's what sets us apart from our competitors.

It's why I mentioned I don't care what they're doing because they're chasing to keep pace with what we're doing. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. I and I want to talk in a minute.

I want to talk a little bit about the sale to Revlon. I know we do have some people here that want to ultimately exit their business. Actually, I think I'll go to that right now because you're talking about it. And there are people that are going to get because when you build a managed company, you are ultimately preparing your business for exit.

You should run your company that way anyway. And so you have to kind of what that endgame is. Right. And so what was that like for you to say?

Okay, here I was, you know, it was our private company and now we're with Revlon. But you've stayed on all these years. I know it's weird. It's really unusual that a founder would stay on.

And I've been with the company since day one, you know, 45 years. Well, when we before we sold, I mentioned earlier that we took on an outside private board of directors to sort of teach us what what we didn't know we were entrepreneurs. We were into the science. We were manufacturing the products.

But there was a lot that we didn't know. And yeah, we'll modify the audio there. And that's why we need bios. So it was very funny.

Our outside board, we had them for five years before we sold. And, they would say, okay, guys, this year we're going to work on, profitability. Like, you have no problem building sales because you have great products, you have great ideas. But now we're going to work on that profitability discipline.

Then we worked on our effort, making sure the numbers were all lining up. We made sure we put some cash in the bank. So each year we had a task that we had to tackle. And at the end of this five year and no.

So, so my brother and I said, oh, it's time to sell. That was never really our goal. You know, this was a passion project, living up to the expectation, of our father's innovation. By the way, we lost our dad two years into the business, but I always felt like my job was to carry his legacy and his vision into the future until I could go all the way to the moon with it.

So that is what drove me. So. So our board went out and they got L'Oreal, Coty, Conair, Redken, Revlon. There were probably seven companies who said, oh, CND, we want to put our our hat in the game.

There were top three manufacturers wanting to buy us. And what I remember is the president of Revlon at the time said, Jan, where's the fire in your belly? What's it all about for you? Why do you do this?

And I said, number one, I'm serving the needs of the nail professional with excellent innovation and education, kind of following the legacy of the original dream. Number two, I'm really keeping that that family legacy alive. But I really want to elevate the game. I don't want to be.

I don't really care if I'm number one, but I want to be the best, which will make me number one. And so I'm very committed to the science, to the customer, to the vision and, and they said, that's why we want you. And if we buy the company, we need you to stay on as the visionary. Now, my brother in a different situation, he was the finance guy.

He was overseeing manufacturing. That's in part why you sell. You scale it up, you leverage, you know, Revlon, Scott manufacturing globally distribution. Well, we already had our own distribution, but it was the legal the finance, the manufacturing is why you sell.

But Revlon said to me as the visionary, we believe in you and we want you to stay. We we will rely upon you. And still to this day, when I sit at the corporate budget table, when we're looking at vision for our company, my job is to defend world class innovation, to make sure that we're investing in education, to empower the Nail Pro to use the systems correctly and to be as creative as exciting. I mean, nails are a fashion accessory, and those three principles have been my guiding light from day one in the garage.

And they have never changed. I mean, here's the thing. And whatever industry that you're in and some of you may know nothing about the nail industry, some of our our men hear and so forth, but you're such a visionary. You're so passionate.

After all the I mean, there's so blessed to have you seriously to stay on because a lot of times that doesn't happen. And, and you've been able to continue to grow and scale all these years. Now we have some of our, attendees want to how many of you want to expand beyond your region and have more of a global landscape? Raise up your hand.

What would you say is probably one of the most important things they need to know when expanding globally? Well, for for us, I think we learned this the hard way that if we got in a hurry to rush in to a market and glean, as you know, as many sales and grow as quickly as possible, it never worked. I remember when we entered France and there was a gentleman who was the number one beauty distributor in France, but he didn't get nails. He was a hair guy, and he didn't really understand our category.

And we should have listened to that as a cue that if he didn't understand that the subject, then how on earth could he support the customer in the way in which we believe they should be supported? So I, I really learned that you, you know, especially globally, you have to meet the person, you have to break bread, you have to endure like having those dinners, getting to know each other, understanding the philosophy of the business. And then empowering them with your vision. It's not good enough for me that a distributor sells beauty products they have to embody.

They have to understand the science or they can't sell what we do. They have to love the nail professional and understand what they do. You know, you think about a nail professional holding the hand of their client. They're working 8 to 10 hours a day, looking eyeball to eyeball into the client size.

They have to have the left brain precision of beautiful precision application. But from the right brain side, they have to be creative enough to delight their every unique individual client. So this is a complicated customer that has this dual ity of power left brain, right brain. And if you tap into them and you support them, the number one issue a nail professional has, they've got in spades creativity.

But they don't believe in themselves. They. Because if you think about 50 years ago the nail pro was doing manicures in the back of the salon and now they're the number. They're one of five top topics on Pinterest and Instagram.

When people go and get their nails done, they find a photo through Pinterest or Instagram and say, this is what I want. And so they are popular. They're finding their fame through through social media, and therefore they're finding their fortune. Believe me when I tell you there are nail professionals who are making six figure incomes sending their children to the best colleges, because they're working with credible scientific products, and they're doing it in extraordinary ways.

So let me ask you a question, because I remember you telling me this before, and I thought this was really amazing. So I want you to think about your products, your services, and who your target audience is, who is your target audience. And then all of a sudden, another audience comes that you could sell to, but you didn't. Right?

Right. We don't sell direct to consumer. We have home care products like solar oil. We have a nail polish called Final Locks that people can buy.

And through Ulta, Amazon, Amazon did an Amazon Pro division. But our products listen to our business model when we come out with like I'll use shellac as the example. Again, it's not one component. It's the base coat, the color coat, the top coat and the lamp.

And scientifically the product communicates with the light output, which creates the the cure, the set of the product. And then when it's time to remove it. This is the coolest part. The nail pro puts a cotton swab on the top of the nail, wraps the the nail in foil for eight minutes.

Now, what's happening during that eight minutes is the acetone is traveling through these microscopic tunnels, through the topcoat, through the colored down to the base coat, where the quick release polymers lie. When the acetone gets there, the product flies off the nail like a butterfly. We trademark the word butterfly removal. Now you one thing that but I really want to dive into is this thought of you could have sold like in Sephora or all that, but you wanted to stay true to who your market was.

So I want to kind of prove a point that applies to all of their businesses because, you know, sometimes we dilute our product or our service in going to too many markets is what I'm trying to say. And I think part of your success is that you did not you stayed true to pro to who your target audience was. Absolutely. And you know, my example of how intricate the science is, putting it in the hands of the consumer would be a disaster, honestly.

Right. Because they don't have the precision, they don't have the application. They wouldn't have the patience to allow the acetone to go all the way down for that magical butterfly. So had we gotten I'm going to use the word had we gotten greedy to say, you know what we've nailed?

We're at the top of our game with our initial audience, the pro. Let's go retail. And trust me, when once we launched shellac, the floodgates opened. I'm going to tell you, within a year we had 100,000 followers taking their nail polish, taking their gel, mixing it together, calling it a gel polish.

And and the word shellac became generic like Kleenex. So people would go in the salon and ask for shellac, thinking it was gel polish. And yet it was our 14 patents later product. But you know, when you work to paint in something, when you work to calibrate something, putting it in the wrong customer's hands would become a disaster.

And a lot of those fast followers that tried to make their own shellac, they failed. They went retail, they went into Sephora. Exactly what you're saying. They were in and out the door within a year or two years.

And because guess what? It's too hard to do. It's why we pay a premium price to have a pro do it. And so I'm going to live and breathe and support the pro to the end of the earth.

Because hand in hand with my pro, we are reaching all of you. We're reaching the consumer. We're educating you on nail health and nail care and I can't do it without the partnership of the nail pro. And and after we sold to Revlon, can you imagine Revlon is a mass consumer industry, company.

And so what do I do at the corporate table? I bang my fist for the pro. That's what I do. That's my job.

If you ask me. What's your ultimate job? That's it. Protecting the pro and all even goes so far as to say, not only do I get support on that corporate, but I, started a scholarship fund for the pro back in 2016 where CND put $50,000 into a fund for school scholarships to recruit new nail professionals.

I went into ten of my distributor partners and they each put ten in. We launched our scholarship with a $250,000 kitty that I've grown to a half a million to recruit that new talent. There are so many nail enthusiasts young now. I want them to be key to many of your industries.

If you can be investing in education for who are your potential shining stars for your team? Well, this has been amazing and adventurous for sure, with the whole everything that just happened. What last piece? Because we're going to dive into vision next and we're going to start building out your strategic vision.

And that's why I wanted to start with Jan's story, because you've done it. You've done it, and you're speaking from looking back on this journey, what would you say? What is some advice that you can leave with everybody here today? I mean, you're all here investing in your businesses.

So congratulations on that. I think that's another lesson I learned in the industry. I got very involved in the industry. I participate on every board.

I pay it forward through philanthropy. I believe that really speaks volumes to your customer, that not only do you want to, you know, make a buck, but you want to make a difference. And that has been kind of my vision since day one. You know, my advice is stay focused on the prize.

Know what's going to help get you there. Avoid distraction, lean in and debate it. And maybe it's the next big idea. And maybe there are times that you have to say, you know what?

That's not in line with my strategy. And sometimes, you know, it's the FOMO. Like, oh my God, I hope I, you know, that's the right decision, that we're not passing up something that could be potentially huge. And, you know, when Alison was talking about, you know, staying focused on the customer, we did one time at the highest ranks of Revlon.

They wanted to do an experiment direct to the consumer. And we fought against it. It failed. We prevailed.

And it really prove the point that if you know who you are, you stay true to you, your vision. You defend it all the way. You treat your community like they're the boss, engage, lean in to them and then pay it forward to make sure that you're not just protecting your business and yourself, that you're protecting your industry, that you are rising to the top of your industry. That's amazing.

It works. Yes. Well, obviously this has been so fantastic. So let's give it up for Jan Arnold.

Everybody. Hi. This is so awesome. I learned so much always with being around you.

And I'm so inspired by your passion and coming. She flew all the way here to the studio to be here with you all. You were at it like a big conference nail conference in Orlando. Came out here to Scottsdale.

So thank you so, so much, Alison a pleasure. Good luck everyone. Thank you so much. It's so fun to see all of your shining faces.

So and and please connect us. If anyone has any questions, I'd be more than happy. All right, all right. So thank you.

See? Indeed.com. Follow.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So thank you, Jan.

Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Scale Up method podcast. Remember scaling your business is about more than just growth. It's about creating the life you want to live.

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