- Good evening everyone. And thank you for joining us this evening to hear Mr. Leonard Lauder, chairman Ameritas and former CEO of the Estée Lauder companies to speak about his new book, The Company I Keep. In a moment, Katie Graddy, Brandeis Dean of the International Business School, and the Fred and Rita Richmond distinguished professor in economics will introduce Mr. Lauder. But before I turn the microphone over to Katie, I would like to express my thanks to Leonard for joining us this evening and share my great enthusiasm for our community to learn more about his much-anticipated memoir in which he shares the business and life lessons he learned over a remarkable career. Leonard's experience is in helping to transform the mom and pop business his mother founded in 1946 in the family kitchen into the beloved brand and iconic global prestige beauty company we all know today as Estée Lauder companies, is a true inspiration. Hearing firsthand from such an accomplished and wise business leader, is a rare opportunity particularly for our business school students who are aspiring to find their own successes in business. Now I'd like to invite Dean Katie Graddy, to describe how we'll conduct this evening event and to introduce Leonard Lauder. Katie.
- Thank you, President Liebowitz. Hello everyone. My name is Katie Graddy, and I'm the Dean of the Brandeis International Business School and the Fred and Rita Richmond distinguished professor in economics. We have a really wonderful event planned for you tonight. In just a few short minutes, I will introduce Mr. Leonard A. Lauder. Mr. Lauder is the chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder companies and the senior member of its board of directors. He's also author of the book, "The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty". It's a really wonderful book and I highly recommend everyone here to read it. I am really truly excited to moderate a conversation with Mr. Lauder. It will share his insights about business art, philanthropy, and so much more. Thanks to everyone who submitted their questions in advance of tonight's event. These questions were very helpful in developing the topics for tonight's conversation. Founded in 1946, Estée Lauder is one of the world's leading manufacturers and marketers of prestige, skincare, makeup, fragrance and hair care products with annual sales of more than 14 billion. In addition to his role as chairman emeritus with Estée Lauder, Mr. Lauder is also the co-founder and co-chairman of the Alzheimer's drug discovery foundation and the honorary chairman of the breast cancer research foundation. An arts enthusiast, Mr. Lauder served as chairman emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he was a trustee until 2011. He's one of the museum's most significant benefactors giving a milestone gift of 131 million in 2008 to the museum's endowment. In concert with the donation of his Cubist collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he helped establish the Leonard A. Lauder research center for modern art. Among Mr. Lauder's honors are the French Legion of honor, the lone sailor award, given by the United States Naval supply core foundation, the women's leadership award given by the Lincoln center corporate fund women's leadership council and the Renaissance man of the year award. From 1983 to 1987, Mr. Lauder served on the advisory committee for trade negotiations to President Ronald Reagan. Most recently in 2020, he was inducted into the retail hall of fame by the world retail Congress. Mr. Lauder was married to Evelyn H Lauder, founder of the breast cancer research foundation from 1959 until she passed away in 2011. Mr. Lauder and Evelyn had two sons together, William, who is now the executive chairman of the Estee Lauder companies and Gary who served as managing director of Lauder Partners, LLC, as well as five grandchildren. Mr. Lauder is currently married to Judy Glickman Lauder, a philanthropist and internationally recognized photographer. The Lauders received the Gordon parks foundation patron of the arts award in 2016. It is now my distinct pleasure to introduce Mr. Leonard Lauder. Mr. Lauder, thank you so much for joining us this evening.
- Thank you, Katie, may I call you Katie?
- Yes, please. Please do.
- I'm delighted to be here, thanks.
- Thank you. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and jump in and start asking questions. And I'm gonna start with the founding of your company. So your mother founded Estée Lauder in 1946. She was a trailblazer as a female business entrepreneur in that era. What are the lasting lessons that your mother passed on to you?
- It's so interesting that they were able to build a company by giving samples, large-sized samples away. And that was the lasting lesson is quality of product. Not advertising yet, but the quality of the product. If you give a great sample away, people come back and buy. And so we've always wanted to have this, quality of product is number one.
- That's very important for everyone in business and for us here at the International Business School too. So you came of age during the depression and that was the time that your mother was building the company or before right before that. So, what effect did the depression have on your approach to building your business?
- Well, firstly, one of the things that I often say, is that you can take the baby out of the depression but you can never take the depression out of the baby. What that means to me is watch all the money that you have and keep yourself always solved. Always have enough money to do anything. So what that means in our family, is guess who is always turning off lights, me. Guess who's saving paperclips? Me. Guess who is turning things back and turning this into the notepads, me, so that all of the bundles that we have invested over the years has always been what's the right thing to do. Not what's the most efficient thing to do but the right to do. And in many cases, we ignore return on investment. Think about that. It may be talking against myself but return on investment is one thing that's measurable but we do a lot of things that are unmeasurable. And that's where coming in and coming from the depression means. You sometimes had to invest money today because it would pay off in a year or two, not immediately.
- Thank you, that's very good to remember. Your book, again, which I really enjoyed reveals you to be a really great observer. And you were gifted at both spotting and acting on future trends in the marketplace. How did you get to be so good at this? And why do you think observation is so important?
- It's a combination of observation with your eyes and what you hear. Examples along the way is sometimes one word sent me off in another direction. So I can tell you an example, I was dealing with a company that had stores in New Mexico and someone complained about them. And I said, well, at least they're paying their bills. And he said to me, do they? A little word like that sent me to our accountants and they weren't paying their bills. So thinking about this, sometimes one word or one little view of something will come up. Now, let me give you another little example. I was visualizing one of our department stores, Neiman Marcus in Houston, Texas. I asked them what was their best selling shade in a women's foundation? And they said such and such a shade. Now, even walkers had basically a white brick clientele. I said, why that shade? They said, oh, they just put in a direct flight from Nigeria to Houston because of the all business and people are buying that. One little word like that changed our entire strategy. If you think about that, sometimes we don't pay attention to little words or a little things that we see. You have to pay attention to everything.
- Okay, thank you. Peter Lichtenthal, who worked for you for many years, he's also a Brandeis alum class of 1978 and a retired global president at Estée Lauder, spent 30 years at your company and has spoken really highly of the Estée working culture overall and specifically of you as a teacher. You are also sometimes referred to as the chief teaching officer. So for us at Brandeis, what is your approach to teaching? And is there a route to your passion for teaching?
- Well, I use the Socratic method, which is you don't say this and this and this, you ask questions. So I teach a course in our company called brand equity and I'll take newspaper clerics, bad companies that may have failed. I'll just take a little clipping. I give it to them to read overnight and say why did they fail? Can anyone tell me why they failed? And people have to think about why something failed, By the way, you learn more from failure than you learn from success which is very important. And so I get people to think about what it is that they're doing or they're seeing that can help them think about the future. And it works very well, extremely well. If you'd like us to send you some of the clippings to read except you're going to cause my Penn alumni, a lot of competition, be careful now.
- I'm sure that our professor of marketing Grace Zimmerman would love to get some of your clippings.
- We'll wait for the professor of marketing now but you are lucky yet.
- Okay, great. Thank you, I'm good. So, Peter speaks especially highly of your extraordinary integrity and your leadership at the company. So if students wanted to succeed as you have what should they be focusing on how to become not only successful, but the best business leaders possible?
- Well, for many years, the great business leaders focused on one thing, trust. If you generate trust in the people that work for you and they trust you you'll find them doing the right thing. We had an executive with us some time ago, who was saying, trust me. And when he said, trust me, everyone ran for the doors because they knew that it was going to screw them. So, trust is everything. If you can develop trust in your word, trust in your products, trust in your ability to deliver what you say you're gonna deliver, trust in almost anything. You could be a leader, Parex launch, trust, trust, trust.
- Okay, thank you. There needs to be more of that, that's very good. In your book, you describe your frequent custom of bringing together your many brand management and sales teams for van tours to visit retailers and Estee Lauder counters and cities across the country. I enjoyed reading about that. So what was the purpose of those trips?
- Well, we all piled into a van a person from Estée Lauder press from clinic and here and there and everything. When we would visit a store, which I noticed, none of you has a brand loyalty, your loyalty is to Estée Lauder. And so let's talk about what you've just seen. So if we want to pick a location why is it that people always liked that particular location? No matter who you are, you can, you can speak about that. What that did was bring the people together and have them collaborate on a decision. And many of them had different decisions, but if you bring people together, what we are, together is great. At the very beginning, we had a lot of brand competition, one brand competed with that. The other that was sometimes damaging to us we brought them together and say, united we stand, and with united we stand, I probably never wouldn't enter the breath into the bag and off we went. Now, there were little moments along the way. When lunchtime came, we went into a food court and ordered everything. And we sat and talk about what you saw earlier in the day. We stopped the van, went to a place that had milk and cookies or coffee and cookies. It wasn't fancy, that's what we did. And that's what brought us all together. If you can bring your team together as one you are a great leader.
- Okay. So, your team came together as a result of these meetings. Did anything else come out of these van tours that you can describe?
- Yes. When we had informal conversations that you could listen to people talk, and you could understand who was good and who was not good, who was analytical and who wasn't. And that gave me an opportunity of seeing who I could take from that brand and move into another brand, and they'll succeed. Listening to them talk gave me insight that no other way would give me the insights.
- So another example of being a very good listener.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Sorry. Favorite saying if God wanted you to talk, whether he wanted you to listen, he would have given you two mouths. Listen.
- Okay, thank you. So one of our students from our MBA class of 22, actually would like to ask you a question. This is the question that she has for you. So how is social media shifting the beauty industry?
- Social media is shifting beauty industry from this standpoint. The barriers to entry are falling down. When I first entered the business, you had to have millions of dollars, a new idea and really, even then it was tough. Now you can, with a good idea and a good product, you don't need any money and you can be in business. That has been the major change. And that means that you have threatened the powers that are there. And those powers you've gotta be alert to the fact that they don't own the business anymore because new people are coming along and knocking on the door.
- Okay, and social media just makes that easier for them to enter it.
- Much easier, right.
- Okay, thank you. So, now in your book, you write about the necessity of having a woman at the table for business discussions and business decisions. So I would say this makes complete sense in the beauty industry but does it apply to other industries?
- Yes, it does. I always love women around. I often accuse guys of having too much testosterone. So in the military, if we have to take the Hill, the man will say run up the mountain and the Hill and take that Hill. The woman will say, well, why should we run it up there? What are we running around? And you get him from behind and she'll be right. The women that we have working for us always have the different view. I think, I don't know what the percentage is. I think we have something like 92 or 93% female employees. Right down to all of our executives, et cetera. Why? Because women have a different mindset than men. Now, mens' mindsets are great, but I like womens' mindsets. Not because I'm in the beauty industry but because they're better. If I were the steel business, I'd have women working for me.
- Excellent, I believe you. You don't have to convince me. Thank you for that. So, you're also a collector. You have enjoyed your entire life. You've enjoyed collecting postcards which really came out in your book. You also collect American posters and you collect Cubist art. So what drew you to become an art collector in these areas?
- I would go into a museum and look at a work of art and say, oh my God, isn't that great. If I could have that work of art and I would live with it. So I lived with a work of art when I was a kid it was a cool Paul Revere's ride. And I looked at it and it was in the Met. And I love that. So I loved a particular painting by Oskar Schlemmer, who's a chairman Baha painter. And it was on display in the museum of modern art. I love that painting. My late wife and I were in Milano and we went to a little inholding in Switzerland called Italia. And I walked into an art dealer and there was a final study but especially for summit painting. I couldn't believe my eyes, I bought it. And I cherished it. And I loved it because I grew up with that painting. I don't particularly collect things to own, by the way, I collect them to conserve them and to give, we give them. So I've given many things to museums. And by the time I'm dead, which I hope will be a long time from now, all my art will have been distributed to a museums or my prints will have been distributed, posters posted, everything. They belong with the people not in my house but in the house of the people which are museums.
- You've made such an incredible contribution to the art world. It's just admirable. And on that note, when you say that you give away your art, what is your perspective on the role of philanthropy and the importance of philanthropy?
- Well, in art, I say, as I mentioned to you, I don't want to possess, I want to preserve. So my view is as art conservator and give it to a museum. Another project for example, we're new Yorkers. And one of the things I wanted to do was change the New York city playgrounds, because they were dangerous. So I built one that got a lot of publicity. And before you know it, every neighborhood changed their playgrounds and it was helpful. You talk about your...I launched the Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. I was the first one to do that. I did that not because I wanted it to be the only one, but because I wanted to set the example that other people could do it, I'm so proud to see Brandeis has done that. We don't have quite the same program, but the idea is the same.
- I was very aware of the Lauder Institute when I was going to business school. It was a great idea.
- Where did you go by the way?
- I went to Columbia Business School.
- Okay. I was a teacher there often. I was a lecturer on occasion. Did we ever meet there? Did you ever me?
- I know, I never had the opportunity to go to one of your classes. I would have loved to. I was there in 1985, so it was a while ago.
- But I was born then, too.
- I would have loved to. But you mentioned the Joseph H Lauder and your founding of the Joseph H Lauder Institute of management and international studies at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. So we again are the Brandeis International Business School and our first program, the Lemberg MBA in international economics and finance was founded over 30 years ago. At the time we felt, or the business school felt that we were innovative because we realized the coming trends, globalization, as probably did you, with your family have a lot or Institute, but do you think and this is sort of a hard question, Is a global future as important today, as it was 30 years ago?
- What's important today is to understand the world. That doesn't mean you have to export to everyone but you have to understand the world. I have to understand what's happening in China, what's happening in Europe, what's happening in the United States? Now, for example, today all the newspapers published, readjusted the census. It said that the United States had the lowest increase in population. Well, some people say, isn't that good? I say, danger ahead. If you have a great country you need people to populate that country. You cannot close your doors to immigration because then you are in trouble. We need to have a large numbers of people who are Americans or Europeans or whatever you want. Japan is static from the standpoint of growth in population. The EU, I'm not quite sure what's happening there but you have to have a population in order to be great.
- Okay. So you definitely, I think I'm hearing you saying that we need to welcome immigrants because we need a growing population. So 30 years ago, again this is another hard question but would you have had the same answer do you think 30 years ago? So is today's importance of globalization different than it was 30 years ago?
- Well, the interest in globalization is different. If you read Adam Smith, the wealth of nations, you'll read there he didn't use the word globalization but that's what he was talking about. So globalization is with us. There's no way you can get away from it, but the best way to solve the challenges that globalization has is to be smart and to be able to produce better products at lesser cost. Simple as that. You don't solve your problems by saying, I don't care. You solve your problems by saying , I've got to be better and smarter and lighter on my feet. Now, we're facing a shortage of chips, right? It's been the papers all the time. Find the better way, okay? I don't know how to make chips, but I know whoever can make it better is going to win. Right now Taiwan is winning. Should we be happy with Taiwan winning, since China is looking at them? Or should we be happier? We're saying, why don't we come and win also? Also, Andy Grove, the founder of Intel wrote a great book called only the paranoid survive. Well, you are looking here at the paranoid in chief of Estée Lauder.
- That came out in your book very much. And always looking to find, you want to find your own competitor. You don't want somebody else to come and compete with you. So turning a little bit to Louis Brandeis. So Louis Brandeis wrote a book called Business-A Profession. In it, he argues that business is indeed a profession. And he says, it's a profession because it should be pursued largely for others and not merely for oneself. He also says that the amount of financial return should not be the accepted measure of success. Can I ask you have these principles guided the building of Estee Lauder companies?
- I will tell you this. I believe that, I believe what I believe in what is said because I think that business is a great profession and you can do more good. If you build a business, then that's good. What we are doing with our profits is, I believe we have one of the most generous employers and the most generous people who do many things around the world. If a business understands what they're supposed to do, they're supposed to be great citizens of their nation. If they're great citizens of the nation, they will survive. Think about this. It's not just profits to give out to your shelters. It's what you do for the nation that you're in. I think that's a key thing that you have to remember.
- That's very important and very good advice. And just very important, so thank you. So tonight we have also, we're gonna change subjects a little bit and we have a special guest that we would like to introduce. So, and I would welcome this special surprise for our audience is, I would like to welcome Judy Glickman Lauder.
- Judy. Okay, now Judy Glickman Lauder is my partner in life today. You look at her and you think she's a kid. She's only got 18 grandchildren and five children. And she's a great photographer and travels the world. And she's probably the most centered person I've ever had the honor to know. So I got lucky twice. My first wife, Evelyn passed away. My second wife, Judy, is there. So for those of you who feel despair at not having a good partner, let me tell you this right now, don't despair. There is someone just around the corner waiting for you whoever he or she may be, and you'll be okay. And if my wife ever shows up.
- While she's coming, she's a very special person. So let me introduce a little bit about her. We were very fortunate at Brandeis to see her talk, deliver a talk about her photography book, Beyond the Shadows, the Holocaust, and the Danish Exception. She's a photographer whose work has been recognized and exhibited in museums absolutely worldwide. So, I was fortunate to be able to hear her speak. And it was very moving her talk, absolutely moving.
- But she's a great photographer and she understands what she's taking what the photographs you've taken and what they will do for the future. Now she's working on donating her entire collection. And because she's a photographer, She has a particularly good eye for buying pictures so that the photographer's eye can also make someone a great collector and she is a great collector and if she ever shows up.
- Have you collected photography in your lifetime?
- Yeah, we miss you. There you go. Here she is.
- All right.
- Hi everybody.
- Hi, welcome. Thank you for joining us tonight.
- Thank you so much.
- I very much liked your talk. I was there, it is probably a couple of years ago now, it was very moving. So, your work is impressive.
- Thank you.
- So now that the two of you are together, I'd like to focus on something that's really wonderful for both of you. And this is a question for both of you. So how is it that you found love in what might be called the second chapter of your life?
- Oh my goodness. I want to start, do I start?
- I'll start, Okay. There was a study done by some organizations but I read about it in the New York Times some years ago. It's what is the biggest killer of men.
- That's not romantic.
- Wait, not smoking, not drinking, being a single unmarried male. I did not want to be a single unmarried male. I loved when I came together with Judy, I met my soulmate and today I can read her mind, she reads my mind and we are so attached to each other that we are one, not two, one. And that one is thrilling for me. Judy, you want to say something?
- It's just sort of amazing. We had only known each other for 40 plus years, Leonard and his lovely, amazing wife, Evelyn and me, and my amazingly wonderful husband Al, we were all married the same year, 1959, a long time ago. And we were living in California Leonard and his family were living in New York but we all happened to come together in Aspen, Colorado, in the eighties. Yeah, early eighties. And our kids, Steve together, we were kind of social friends our families just really united that the major link was really Leonard and Al they ski together every day that they were in Aspen and so on. We're very blessed and we're very lucky. That's all I can say. It's just, oh, I have I asked then I sort of knew that yes he was definitely going to remarry. And Evelyn had passed away a couple of years before my husband passed away. And it's sort of amazing. We were together because along the way, Leonard was was engaged to someone else, et cetera, that broke up. And somehow we were meant to be, but I asked one son who said he had been remarried and he said, mom, just you can have two soulmates and a daughter-in-law that I asked, woo, what's going on here? And she said, follow your heart. And it's just kind of amazing.
- What Judy said, follow your heart is our motto. Your heart often knows when your head can barely comprehend.
- And sometimes I have a feeling that comes with business too, or with your profession or with whatever I'm a photographer. I grew up in photography. I've just, it's kind of been kind of a life thing. But when I was happened to walk into a concentration camp in the eighties, it turned me all around and I just sort of knew kind of what my, maybe my contribution, my role or something would be. And thank you, Brandeis. And thank you, president Leibowitz and thank you everybody. And M'Lissa Brennan and everyone, it just, I do a lot of speaking and a lot of showing about us human beings how we can sort of sink to the depths. It's not just the Nazis and so on, but we can also make a difference. And I was very lucky to be asked to go to Denmark to try to put together an exhibit dealing with the rescue of the Danish Jews during World War II. And I was able to photograph rescuers, survivors see where they were hidden, be on actual boats that got them into Sweden and all that kind of thing. And it was kind of a following a passion or following my heart. And I think that we kind of both agree on that.
- We do.
- Every area look well, wait, can you tell us anything?
- We agree about everything including politics. Thank God for politics.
- Thank goodness. Anyway, thank you everybody. This has really been a pleasure.
- So you both, I mean, you're both passionate. You follow your passions, but you and photography you and your business and both of you in your lives. So if you had advice for students, I mean they are just starting out. And as they're thinking about the future, what would you advise them to do?
- I also have, I guess I'm into romance right now. One of my grandsons is a graduate of Brandeis, Evan Glickman, who met his bride at Brandeis. Alison He, they've been married probably four years now. And so all of this, it's so lovely and so important. And Leonard, you give the advice.
- Okay. If I were just getting out of coming out of Brandeis now, here's what I would do. I would take a pause. I travel, don't read the newspapers because they often write what they want to write not what you would want to read. Travel, see what's happening in the world. And then you must say to yourself, I want to follow my heart and my ideas and not what other people do. And you'll see opportunities along the way. And you have to stick with what you want to do. Look, when I joined Estée Lauder no one had ever heard of Estée Lauder, no one. And yet we persevered because we knew that if we kept going and going and going during the first few years that I was there everyone said, oh, they gotta go broke. They're going broke. Why? Because we were giving product away as samples and the people who said, we're going to go broke, they went broke, and we're still here. So travel, see what's going on in the world and then find out why something has failed and why something is winning. Because these are two lessons you must learn. It's not just who's winning, who's losing, and vice versa.
- Okay. So travel and find out what's failed and why. I think that's excellent advice. And I also, I'd like to actually say a little bit about your book too, and just say on a personal note how much I got out of your book and thank you for writing it. And you talk about the samples. And I really connected with that. And I just looked at, I remember accompanying my mother to Jordan Marsh in Orlando for her Estee Lauder gift. And that was a big part of my childhood. And she'd get very excited when the free sample came in. And in fact, now in my family, I have three daughters and they use Mac and they use Smashbox. And this connection, I mean, in my family has been very important. I want to thank you, that is so much fun reading about it in the book too. The other thing I think I'd like to say, you say follow your passion or do what you enjoy. On Fridays at Columbia Business School, we didn't have classes. So I would go down to the metropolitan museum of art and just look around and I made one of the paintings. When you say you find a beautiful painting. I mean, it was Mondays, I think, boating, but it was anyway, I made it my own. I would go and look at it basically and just look at the person in it. And I can understand your love for art because it's just something that was nice. And finally, I want to say, I really enjoyed reading about the extraordinary turnaround of the Whitney Museum. And it was really through you, when we talk about leadership earlier, and you talked about philanthropy it was through your leadership and philanthropy that it turned around. So this is what I took away from your book. And I thought it was wonderful.
- Well, thank you for that. Look, and it's not that the Whitney chat turned around. I came there and I said, museums are known for the power of their collections. If you don't have a good collection, you have to then put on temporary shows and you aren't famous for that. Make yourself famous for the power of the collection that you have. And so some of the things that I did were to just to elevate painters like Jasper Johns we're going to have a show of his because I felt having a great John's collection would give us national, if not international renown. So think about this. If you want to go into business, what are you famous for? Just how to live? What are you famous for? If you are a museum you're famous for your collection if you are a collector that's what you were famous for. If you are a businessman, what are you famous for? Think about that.
- Okay, thank you. So I'm gonna go ahead and on that note and tonight I guess I'd like to say, well maybe the Rose has a wonderful connection but collection when I think about this too. So, but on that note let me just thank everyone who joined us and I'll turn it over to president Liebowitz and to you
- The Rose has a great collection, greater than almost anyone can imagine. And all you can do is make sure that everyone knows what's in the Rose collection because you can learn more from the eye of the donors.
- Thank you. Thank you, Judy and thank you Leonard, we appreciate hearing from you both, Judy nice to see you again. We look forward to welcoming you back to campus. Once again, we'd love to see you, and your work would be great. And we'd love to show you and take you around The Rose so you can see the museum again and appreciate it. We really do.
- I also want to say your wife is beautiful.
- Thank you, we're soulmates, and we are one, just like you two. Wonderful seeing you both and good luck.
- Thank you.
- Bye-bye.
- Thank you so much.