Who Says Dreams Don't Come True? Not Carol's Daughter

Tonight’s tale is a great reminder that finding the right teammates can often be that missing ingredient.

And if you will allow me a quick personal plug, that’s exactly what I am doing right now with my One-Person Empire Accelerator. If you need someone on your side who is committed to helping you go to the next level, I encourage you to check it out! I’ve built four great one-person businesses, and sold the last one to Mark Cuban. As Tom Cruise once famously said in Jerry Maguire, “Help me help you!” 😀

By the time Lisa Price was 28, she owed the IRS tens of thousands of dollars she did not have.

Lisa declared bankruptcy.

She was working in television production then, on the crew of The Cosby Show and its spinoff, Here and Now, chasing a career that was not exactly chasing her back.

And at night, in her Brooklyn kitchen, she mixed sweet almond oil, jojoba, and soy into butters and creams. Why? Her own skin had always been dry, and nothing on the drugstore shelf worked. So she made her own.
It was not a business. It was skincare for an audience of one.

HER MOTHER’S IDEA

Her mother, Carol, saw it first.

“St. Mary’s is having a flea market in two weeks,” Carol told her. “Take your butters. See what happens.”
Lisa did not expect much.

She sold out.

That summer she did more flea markets, more craft fairs, and kept selling out. By 1993 she had turned it into a real, if tiny, mail order business, still mixing every batch herself in that same kitchen. In 1999 she opened her first store, on a corner in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and named the whole thing “Carol’s Daughter,” after the woman who told her to bring the butters.

THEN THE RIGHT PEOPLE (HOO BOY!) SHOWED UP

Carol’s Daughter grew slowly, on word of mouth and one loyal customer at a time.

Then it happened:

Somehow someone connected to Oprah had tried Carol’s Daughter’s products and loved them. So in 2002, Oprah featured the brand on her show, and the website crashed. 17,000 people tried to buy Healthy Hair Butter at once.

That got Lisa noticed.

Steve Stoute, a former record executive, believed there was a much bigger company hiding inside the one Lisa had built. He put together a group of investors and raised a whopping $10 million to help her expand nationally.

Who signs on to fund a bath and body line out of a Brooklyn kitchen? Turns out:

Jay-Z. Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. Mary J. Blige.

People who did not need to believe in Carol’s Daughter, but did. Jay-Z gave her one piece of advice she never forgot: “The truth is within the roots of a tree.” Stay grounded in what made the brand true, he told her, and everything else would grow from there.

FULL CIRCLE

By 2014, Carol’s Daughter was doing tens of millions in sales a year, and L’Oréal bought it for millions more.

Lisa Price stayed on.

But here’s the kicker: This story does not end with L’Oréal.

In 2025, more than a decade later, L’Oréal sold Carol’s Daughter back. Back to Lisa Price.

She is President of the company again. The one she started with $100, a card table, and a mother who believed her butter was worth selling.

The Takeaway

Notice what carried Lisa Price the whole way.

Not one lucky break, but the willingness to let other people in. Her mother told her to try the flea market. Steve Stoute told her she could go bigger. Jay-Z told her to stay true to her roots. None of it happened alone, and none of it needed to. Maybe you too have something you have been mixing quietly in your own entrepreneurial kitchen, waiting for someone to tell you to bring it to your version of the flea market.

Bring it to the flea market (that is, as I like to say at the bottom of each of these newsletters, “Be bold!”)

Steal This Strategy

🚀 Build: The One Person Empire Accelerator. Every empire, including Lisa’s, starts with one person and one product; if you are ready to build yours, join me live starting September 10.

🛠️ Tool: Product Wins Boil Down to Knowing Your Customer and Values. Lisa Price’s own rules for picking which product to sell first, straight from Inc.

📖 Book: Success Never Smelled So Sweet. Lisa Price’s own memoir on bankruptcy, $100, and building Carol’s Daughter debt-free. 

📺 Video: The Founder of Carol’s Daughter, Lisa Price, Shares Her Wisdom After 33 Years in Business. Price, in her own words, on three decades of building and rebuilding the brand. 

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!