Carol’s Daughter Founder Lisa Price Shares How She Built a Business That Has Lasted 25+ Years

How do you build a business that’s successful and resilient enough to make it to its silver anniversary—especially in an industry as fickle as beauty and haircare? In Episode 6 of the SistersInc. podcast, “Proving Your Staying Power,” Lisa Price shares how she did just that with Carol’s Daughter.

The now-iconic brand was born in Price’s kitchen in Brooklyn, New York, back in 1993. In the beginning, she thought of it as a way to make a living from home so she could be there for her family.

“I thought that it would be an alternate way for me to earn money,” she says. “My job was working in television production. I loved my job but it was long hours, and weekends, and nights. And I thought, whenever I get to the point where my husband and I decide to have children, how can I maintain this schedule and be able to be a mom.”

Price never imagined that the company would grow into the beauty behemoth it now is, with 1,800 employees and a reported valuation of $27 million when she sold it to L’Oréal in 2014.

“I started so small, and very organically,” Price says. “My vision was always let it just keep being more. So every time I would hit a certain milestone, I felt like the universe was giving me permission to dream bigger.”

Managing that kind of growth isn’t easy, Price admits: “There were things that I didn’t know. I learned, I messed up, and then I learned from messing up.”

But Price’s leadership was able to shepherd the brand through the up and downs that come with staying in business for more than a quarter-century. To hear how she did it, check out Episode 6 of the SistersInc. podcast.

SistersInc. is Black Enterprise’s podcast for and about women business owners, hosted by Executive Managing Editor Alisa Gumbs. Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in America and on every episode, we’ll sit down with one successful CEO to share how she slays the challenges of being a black woman in business.