How I Built This with Guy Raz - Ouidad hair products: Ouidad Wise

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Ouidad Wise found the inspiration for her multi-million-dollar business right on top of her own head. She turned her passion for curly hair into a bustling New York City salon - and then a national hair care brand, splitting the responsibilities of running the business with her husband Peter. Juggling finances and family, the couple lived apart during the week for 16 years, all while raising two kids. Eventually, in 2018, after 40 years in the hair industry, Ouidad sold the brand, and now volunteers as a consultant for people launching their own salons.This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Melia Agudelo. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Kwesi Lee. You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail]. And sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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inspiring, and most importantly, fun. It's 100% free. And to sign up, just visit gairoze.com. That's g-u-y-r-z.com. So you opened up to crickets. There's nothing. It was very, very scary. But we were lucky that around the corner was Condy Nass, publication, who owned a lot of the magazines.

So there were a lot of ladies working in that building. And one of the ladies came in. Her name was Linda, and I did her hair, and she just looked in the mirror and just didn't say anything. Her mouth dropped, and I said, that goes our career. There goes all the money. This woman is mortified. And she had tears in her eyes. And she got up.

She came to me, and she said, I have never, ever seen my hair look like this. I love it. Welcome to How I Built This. a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how We Dodd Wise turned her passion for curly hair into a multi-million dollar business with hair products sold in stores across the country. Most businesses start as a way to earn a living, right? And for the most part, people start a business to do something that they're either good at or that they like, or both.

Think about the small businesses you use every week, a nail salon, a gift shop, a takeout pizza parlor, and of course, the place you get your haircut. Virtually, all of these businesses are small by design. But what if you wanted to take that mom-and-pop shop and scale it into a multi-million dollar company? Well, there isn't a simple formula, but today's story is a pretty remarkable case study, because Weedadad Wise and her husband, Peter managed to turn a single hair salon into a massive brand. If you know your shampoos, and especially if you have curly hair, you will know the name Weedad. The brand, as you've probably figured out, was named after its co-founder. Pretty much from the time she was in her teens, Weedad's ambition was to have her own salon. And eventually, she did. She and her husband

Peter managed to scrounge together loans and whatever cash they had to owe to, open up a small salon in New York in the early 1980s. The salon specialized in curly hair. And what Peter and Widad did together is what many parents will recognize from juggling a multi-child home. They divided and conquered. Peter handled the accounting.

He set up a mail order business. He handled operations. Weidad cut hair, came up with formulations for products, and taught hundreds of other stylists how to manage curls. And for 16 years, Peter and Widad lived apart during the week. Peter running the business from their home in Connecticut, Wiedad working out of the salon in New York. And they did all of this while also raising two kids. Now, like so many businesses we featured on the show, they never intended to build out a brand, or in their case, to create a line of hair care products. It just sort of

snuck up on them. And in 2018, after 40 years in the industry, Wiedad Wise sold the brand to a private equity firm for an undisclosed sum. Weidat actually started her life overseas. She was born in Lebanon in the 1950s. Her dad was a businessman and the family was pretty comfortable there, but the region was also volatile and Weidad's dad was worried about the family's future. It was very common to one day for you to live the life of comfort and happiness. And then the next minute, you have nothing, absolutely nothing. And it was one more time where my dad has had that pressure and lost majority of his businesses and decided to pack up and get the hell out or his words.

He wanted out. Yeah. All right. So you guys eventually end up in the U.S. I think you were 11. You had an older sister who was 13. Yes. And you ended up in Rhode Island.

And I'm assuming I'm going to take a leap here and say that maybe you had some relatives there or you knew some other families from Lebanon who had gone there. Is that fair to say? Very fair to say. And a very good leap guy. When my dad was born, his mom died giving birth. His father was he had left and came to the United States. So he had started a whole family and they were residing in Rhode Island.

And we ended up living in a home that was very close. to the parish church, which happened to be in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which is the smallest, tiniest, little hole in the wall in all of the United States. I think it's one square mile. And Viola Davis lived across the street. Wow. You should hear her stories about Central Falls. And you know what? Now I hear her accent, in your accent. It's a very, you got the Rhode Island. I mean, when you were 11 years old and you got to Rhode Island, you pretty, you pretty, probably barely spoke English. I didn't speak any English whatsoever.

That was the most intense and frustrating time of our life. We would be in classes and the teacher would be in front of the class speaking. And it would just be a talking head with lips moving. And we would have no idea what the hell she was saying. Excuse my language. It's just like we're sitting there. We all looked like deer in headlights. My sister, myself, my two brothers, all of us.

And little by little, we learned watching television. thank God for a gun smoke, and, you know, I love Lucy, my favorite. I mean, you were thrown in there in a completely different environment. Do you remember feeling as a kid like a total outsider? Not only was I did I feel like a total outsider. I was definitely told I was a total outsider. My sister and I, we had just come. It was December.

My mom had put us in school right away. We had these fake fur. They were stiff and ugly as can be these coats to go to school because we were freezing. Our afros were as big as can be because there was nothing to manage it. And the kids in school were brutal. They were absolutely brutal. They would make fun of us. They would grab our hair.

They used to call us the Mongol brothers. They addressed us as the Mongol sisters. And if you know who that is, they are two wrestlers, Italian wrestlers with who really like way back in the 60s, big guy. with curly afros. And I have to tell you, I personally got into a lot of physical fights to protect my sister and myself. We doubt, was school, imagine, I mean, not only did you have to learn English, but now you're in a completely different system in the U.S. Was school hard for you as a teenager? Yes. It was very, very tough. I didn't enjoy middle school and high school. As a matter of fact, I found out there was a vocational school and I wanted out just so I could

go and physically touch things and do things. And I convinced the teacher and the counselor to speak to my parents and have me transfer to which I did. And this was a vocational school to study anything in particular? Yes, all the trade that you want. So I jumped into hair. And I had such a drive for it because since we got to the States, we weren't able to manage our hair. It was very difficult. There wasn't anything to use. There wasn't anything to fix it. And so when I started playing, with hair. And I started having access to whatever products we were using at the school. I would mix things up to help my hair. I would go home and it would be such a revelation for my mom, my sister, my brothers. It was such a big deal. And so really unconsciously and subconsciously, I was

driven there. Let's talk about your hair for a moment. You're 16 years old. I'm assuming that a lot of the kids, and particularly the girls, that you were around, had straight hair, right? Or straight-ish hair. Describe your hair. What was it like? My hair is very, very tight, tight curls. There was a lot of it. It was very difficult for it to just shape ahead of hair. It would stick out like a pyramid, a triangle. We used to use heavy, heavy creams and then put a net on my hair so it dries into place. It was stiff as can be in the minute humidity hit. It would just expand and grow out of proportion was the only description. It was ridiculous. So, you know, if a big wind came, it'd be like an umbrella, it would pick me up. Yeah. You know, it's interesting to think about this time,

because we're talking about the late 60s, early 70s. Correct. So when you were at, when you were a cosmetology school and you were learning how to take care of hair, were they teaching you how to take care of only straight hair? That's all they knew. Yeah. At the time, the media, the newscasters, there's all the everything. The magazines were all blonde hair blown out and straight. Maybe some would burn that once in a while you get a red head. And if somebody came in with curly hair, the first thing that would be required is to wet their hair,

blow it straight and then cut it. Because they just didn't know how to manage curly hair. Didn't know how to work with it. Right. But when I was in school, the last year in school, I was very fortunate, even though I gave my teacher hell. She's Italian and she had curly hair. and she had a little bit of tolerance with me.

Her name is Mrs. Lombardi, lovely lady. And when, towards my last year, when we were able to work on models, I used to always ask her, can I have all the curly hair and can I do it curly? And she said, I do not know if these people would feel comfortable walking out with their curls. And I used to say, you're absolutely correct, Mrs. Lombardi, you do not know because none of you know how to work with curly hair. That's the God-given gift. We need to celebrate it.

And she used to say, okay, you need to follow the rules. I'm the teacher. You're the student. Please blow out the hair. And I used to talk, the clients as we're shampooing them. I used to chew their ear off. Please let me do your hair curly. Don't go out with straight hair.

Tell her you want curly hair. And I think I've only convinced, too. But I did do curly hair. They loved their hair. And they walked out. And yes, I did get in trouble. So you're in this program, and I guess once you graduated, you ended up working at a salon in Providence. Yes.

For a guy that you had met, who was also of Lebanese descent, David Schwery. Very good, yes, my mentor. He was your mentor, and he had a salon in Providence? At Brown University. On the campus of Brown. High-end salon or sort of an upscale salon? A very upscale salon. Right.

David was also doing, he would give hairdressing classes. And when I started working with him, he, I guess, saw my energy and just kept asking for me. And then pretty much I became the permanent person working with him. And after I graduated, he had asked me to go join him. So you moved to Providence around 17 years old on your own. Were your parents okay with, were they good with that? Were they comfortable with you going out and just kind of? kind of getting an apartment and...

You're kidding, right? My poor mom. No, absolutely not. Women do not leave the house unless they are married. I think I mortified my mother when I told her that I was going to move to Providence. It was easier for me to work and live next to where I was working. And I'm going to say exactly what she said to me. My mom is no longer with us.

It means the world to me. She lives in me. I take her everywhere I go. She turned around to me. She said, I'm sorry. you are embarrassing me. I really hope that you get hit by a Mac truck so I don't have to embarrass myself. Okay, mom. She really was embarrassed that you were moving out and living on your own. Because only you know what kind of girls do that. Right. But it sounds like you really have and

had a pretty firm independent streak. Yes. That you just, you were going to do it. It didn't matter. Always, since I was a child. And that was really pretty much endorsed by my father. My father loved the fact that I was strong enough, that I was confident that, and he was just happy that I wasn't going to get run over. Yeah. So what was it like? I mean, so you were presumably an apprentice in that salon in Providence for some time? Yes, for almost a year and a half. And when I was working with David, he was very good to me.

He saw my spirit. He allowed my spirit to be. He never tried to. Once in a while, he tried to curb my mind. enthusiasm, as he now we could say, but he used to just say, you know, this is a little bit too much. You have to just, I understand that you're very passionate about curly hair, but please don't try to convert every kid that comes, every student that came in. Don't try to convert them. They leave your crying. They leave you're upset. They report you to the front desk. Just listen to them.

If they want straight hair, give them straight hair. That's it. Give them what they want. That's your job. See, you're the kind of hairdresser I like, because I'll go in and I'll say, what do you want? And I'll say, well, what do you think I should get? And they'll say, I don't know, what do you want? Oh, no. But I want you to say, well, I think you should do this. And I'm looking at your head and I can tell you that you need this.

That's what I want. Exactly. And that's what everybody should. If you have the confidence in your hairdresser, that's what your hairdresser. I stood behind my chair for 41 years. My clients would sit in my chair and would say nothing about what they want. They would say, okay, go ahead. I love it.

Okay. So I think you spent a couple of. of years there at David Salon in Providence. And David had some connections, I guess, in New York City. And through him, I think you met these two guys, these brothers who sort of did like commercial hairstyling for the entertainment industry. Yes. And so you began working with them, like sort of dividing your time between Providence and New York. Exactly. We were off Sunday Monday. So I would go Saturday night. I would take the train to New York. We would work together. We would do shoots together, do whatever I had to do. And then on Monday I would go in and work with them and head back to Providence and then work with David.

And that carried on for a year before I decided I wanted to move to New York. What kind of work were you doing? I mean, were you going on TV commercial shoots and movie sets and stuff? Yes, I had no idea who anybody was. It was amazing. What an experience. By the very, very first shoot, we worked, I think it was Eve Celeron's Opium. a commercial for that perfume. Right, the perfume opium. And I can't, I think it was the under something,

the name of the discos, underground. Okay. So here we are. We're down there. We're in the basement doing hair and makeup for the models and everybody. Then you have Yves El-La Ron, you have Bianca Chagga, you have all these people walking by to whom I had no idea who they are. My job was to make sure that everybody's curls were in place, and that was my assignment. And any movies that you worked Yes, I was actually lucky enough to work on Starsborn. Wow. Yeah. With Barbara?

With the real Barbara? Strysand? The Real Barbara. Wow. And then I was sent on an emergency to a church on Park Avenue. They were filming a movie. And the star hated his hair. They had straightened out his hair.

So they had asked me to go. So they took me and it was Dudley Moore. I had no idea who he was. was. He's shorter than I am and I stood over him and I was trying to fix his hair and he was living. Wait, this was for Arthur? 10. Oh, for 10. Oh, my God. Dudley Moore. Yeah. I mean, this was, he was like the man of the 80s.

There you go. Wow. I didn't know who he was. He was so upset. I yelled at him. I was like, okay, I can't do your hair with you bumping around. Sit out. Let me fix your hair. The minute we were able to get the curls back in and they filmed it, he was so kind. He came and apologized. And then I laughed. So my experiences were really unique and wonderful, but half of the time I had no idea where I was. Yeah. So you'd been doing this for a while, right?

You're around 22, 23 years old at this point. And I guess eventually, because you're doing it so much, you decided to just move to New York. And I read that you had an opportunity to sign a contract with one of those agencies that was like booking all those hair and makeup gigs that you were working on. Yes. And it seems like it could have been a pretty good deal for you. but I guess you didn't want it. You didn't sign the contract. How come?

So they had asked me to sign a 10-year contract, to which I would be on there. I couldn't do anything and just work with them. And so I refused to sign a contract, and I was thrown into the streets. They would not work with me. I had to find my own. Little by little, I had built my own portfolio

and started doing hair and makeup for Broadway and ad agencies and everywhere. So I was a freelance artist. It's kind of amazing that you were so that wise at 22 to say no, because that's a safe, secure opportunity. I mean, a lot of people would say, oh, okay, 10 years, that's great. I'm employed for 10 years. But you somehow knew that that wasn't going to be the right move. Why did you know that?

I felt captured. I felt that there was something, having been, I came to the States, everything was very different. It was hard to trust. It was because then when you trust somebody, they would mislead you or I was always being picked on. A lot of things were going on. And I just felt like I couldn't lock myself up, that I knew I wanted to do different things. So it was this urging me that I just didn't feel it was the right thing to do. All right.

So you're doing freelance work in New York to kind of keep afloat. And I think around this time, I mean, a lot happens in this period of time because you moved to New York and you start doing gigs on your own. but you also meet this guy, Peter. Yes. Who would become your husband? Who was Peter? How did you, what was he, what was gone on in his life? How'd you meet him?

Peter works in the restaurant. He was working in the restaurant on 14th Street, a very nice Italian restaurant and upscale one. He was a waiter or? He was waiting and managing a head waiter at the restaurant. Right, okay. And I met the owner of the restaurant by running out of a cabin. I'll tell you this story. In October, I was going to Studio 54.

for a Halloween party, and then we were going to do a shoot. I love that. That is late 70s, New York. That's right. Early 80s, yeah, okay. Well, I got into a cab, and the taxi driver was taking me all different kinds of ways. My fee back then was $20, I think, in the cab, which normally $4. And I waited for him in the traffic.

It was bump to bumper traffic on 14th Street. I waited for the light to turn green. And I jumped out of the cabin, and ran. And the first place I ran to was San Stefano, which was the restaurant that Peter was working in. And the owner of the restaurant was sitting. It wasn't open. They were getting ready to open. They didn't open until 5.30.

And I ran in there, and he said, can I help you? And I said, yes, I just got away from a cab. He's taking me for a ride. And I just, I can't pay him. And he said, okay, you stay here. Do you want to stay for dinner? I said, I can't. So the next day I went over and had dinner with him to thank him.

And I was very grateful to him. And that's where I met Peter. Wow. And the owner was a gay gentleman that was running for the second district. He told me what he was doing and asked me if I would be kind enough to attend some of his events to be, I guess, the women on his arm during his campaign. And I said yes. In one night, he was hosting a political dinner. Everybody was there and Peter was heading the table. He was managing the table with two other waiters. When he got to me, I honestly did say this, and you can ask him. When he got to me, he said, he was.

was asking us what we wanted to eat, I asked him to jump in my plate as a joke, and he never came back to the table. Wow. I mean, this is what people today on Tinder and Hinge and Bumble just miss out on. They really do. So wait, just to get the story straight, the owner of the restaurant, he was a gay man, and he was running for office. But this is the early 80s. He was maybe closeted. Yes. And he wanted you around him so people wouldn't ask questions about his personal life? Correct. But Peter and I, we had a really tough time.

He didn't trust me for a while because his boss told him that I was his fiancé. So Peter, I would try to meet Peter, try to reach Peter, try to communicate with Peter. And Peter kept his distance because the last thing he wanted to do was lose his jobs. Like, here is the fiancé flirting with me. So you were chasing him? Yes. Wow. All right.

So the two of you guys become an item and get married fairly quickly. A year to the date. I mean, wow. Tell me a little bit about the decision to get married. I mean, you were, you know, what did your family think? I mean, what did they think, hey, you're rushing into something or were they supportive? Was everybody like on board? At the time, my mom was sick.

She had developed cancer in 77. and breast cancer. And I used to go home every weekend from New York to spend time with her. She didn't like the fact that I was a single woman in the city by myself. So when I told it that I had met somebody and I actually fell in love with someone and I wanted to marry them. When she met Peter, she was very, very pleased. So they were welcoming. And meantime, this, your mom is, I know eventually she passed away at a fairly young age,

in early 50s, I think, right? Yes. Yes, 50. And so you're in New York, and you and Peter are now a couple. And I guess the two of you decide, let's start a business together. Tell me a little bit about that sort of realization, because many married couples don't get to that point. They have their own careers.

What was it about you and Peter and building something together that you thought would make sense? When Peter left his job, he loved what he did and he wanted his dream was to have a restaurant. But we were so in sync. We got together. We're both driven and we both were, we wanted to build something for ourselves. And of course, we didn't have much money. We didn't have any money. And then coming to an agreement as to what business was.

It took months of discussions. And then finally, we came up with the idea, we'll flip a coin. If it's heads, it's salon. If it's tails, it is actually a restaurant. And we swore to each other, we won't put our hands behind our back, cross our fingers. None of that. Be really fully committed. And once we came to that decision, which took quite a while to do it,

we flipped a coin and it was heads. And I wasn't good about it. I was so excited. And I totally didn't even pay attention to poor Peter. Like so, if the. The coin went the other way, you might be retiring from the restaurant business right now. I don't think I would have lasted. Right.

I'm telling you, he is a much better man than I am. So you decide that you're going to open up a salon. And did you sort of have in mind, like, was it going to be like nice and maybe upscale? But it wasn't going to be anything particularly different, right? Or was it? Yes, it was. It was. Absolutely.

It was going to be a hair salon that's, going to cater to curly hair. I wanted to open a salon that would cater to people like me. How did you, I mean, given that neither of you guys had any cash, I'm assuming Peter didn't come from a wealthy family. No. How did you even get the money to get out a lease on a building, on a location? Lease took forever to find because we weren't established. They were concerned about getting the rent. So that was difficult. We were able to convince Luray, who owned Luray, who owned Luray, restaurants was a very well-known French restaurant. He owned the building, and we convinced him to

actually build on the roof of his little brownstone, adding a floor to it and putting a salon there. And money, we weren't able, we didn't have any money. It was very difficult. We would go to banks. We would pitch the ideas to the banks of over 60% of people in this country have, all over the world have curly hair. This is going to be incredible. This is going to be a, it's going to be a, a huge success. And they were just, there were all men sitting at the bank, rolling their eyes, just saying, this makes no sense. You might as well burn the money.

And after a while, it's just, we were lucky. Reagan was the president, and he had just passed the law where he was allowing the SBA, which is the Small Business Administration, to grant little money for immigrant people to be able to open their businesses. And they gave us $25,000. And that's like a million. Wow. So it was perfect.

We needed a little bit more. So it was asking family, friends, begging, borrowing. We came borderline to stealing, of course not. But we put the salon together. We couldn't afford to build the salon itself if my friend's family are in construction building came in and camped out in this space and built up the salon in three days. Wow. And so the idea was,

I'll have a salon that caters to women with hair like mine, or anyone, really. Right. Curly hair, tight curls, wavy hair. And were you going to advertise it that way? Like, were you thinking, hey, we should maybe call it like curls or, you know, curl salon or something like that? As far as what to call the salon, that was something else that Peter and I had to come in agreement on. Peter thought Widad would be a great name for the salon. I thought he was absolutely crazy.

I couldn't imagine my name as a salon. And he kept saying, Weaad, it's so different. Nobody understands it. That's what makes it great. It is so unique and finally convinced me. So we did do an awning up there that did say, We Dodd, the curl experts. But that meant nothing to people.

When we come back in just a moment, Wead manages to get the salon up and running and even thriving before she realizes, hang on, there's actually a second business. year that could be even bigger. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's April 24th, 1984. And Wiedad Wise is about to open her brand new salon, which specializes in curly hair. It's in Midtown, Manhattan, just a few doors down from the Carnegie Deli. And I remember the door opening 9 o'clock in the morning I was there. Everything is ready to go. And no clients and the phone wasn't ringing.

My heart was in my throat throbbing. I was so nervous. It just, we was so buried and working diligently as to how to build, how to open it, go through the whole process. SBA took forever back and forth that we didn't do any marketing whatsoever. So you opened up to crickets. There's nothing. It was very, very scary. And Peter came up with a screen. idea. And I said to him, I said, Peter, there's no customers. What are we going to do? I know some of the clients that I had are going to come in, but not enough. And he said, flyers. Flyers. And I said, flyers. What are flyers? And he said, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to hand out flyers for this business. I'm going to select the people I give flyers to. So Peter got

dressed to the nines, but every morning at 6 a.m., he would get up, run into the street around where the salon was. And he would hand. out flyers to ladies coming out of the subway that were well dressed and had curly hair. And we were lucky that around the corner was Condi Nast, publication who owned a lot of the magazines. So there were a lot of ladies working in that building. And one of the ladies came in, her name was Linda. And I was so excited standing behind the chair. And I did her hair.

And she just looked in the mirror and just didn't say anything. her mouth dropped and I said, that goes our career. There goes all the money. This woman is mortified. And she had tears in her eyes. And she got up. She came to me and she said, I have never, ever seen my hair look like this.

I love it. Wow. And then I know, as you know, the real compliments, the real results is when she gets back into her office. Yeah. And her friends and her friends and her. pierce here. And she started getting compliments. And little by little, we started getting sprinkle of women here and there and here and there. Not till three months later did I realize that she was

the person that was managing a lot of the magazines. So she had access to all of them. And everybody saw her hair. Wow. The word and mouth went out so fast. It was incredible. It was one woman telling another woman to her family, to her friends. The ladies started coming. Then men started coming with their curly hair because they're sick and tired of shaving it off or greasing it down to manage it. And the business just started. It was incredible. I read that one of the things you did, and it makes sense to me knowing that Peter was a restaurant manager, and so he was so focused on hospitality. One of the things you guys did in your first salon was you adjusted the lighting so that it fell on the client in the chair

and not on the hairdresser. In other words, you really wanted to focus on making the client feel like a star. That's exactly what we did. Everything was cated around the customer. Every little detail was thought about how we serve them, how we weren't allowed to speak to each other in front of the clients. We did a lot of eye signals because it was their space. We weren't allowed to pass anything in front of a client

that was their space between the mirror and the actual seat. And the way it was described as if they were performing on stage and we were the backup. So tell me about how it worked. I mean, Peter was like in a restaurant except as a salon. He was front of house. He was doing appointments and he was dealing with like store cleanliness. And you were the only hairstylist?

At the beginning, I was the only hairstylist. And a friend of mine from one of the salons I worked at joined us. So Peter was the front desk. He would welcome the clients in. He would check the clients out. He was pretty much managing operations. This was a seven-day-a-week job. Even though you were probably closed Sunday and Monday, that was the day for accounting and prepping for the week. Like, you were working nonstop. It was non-stop. He would leave and go to work in the restaurant and then go home and crash and get up and do the same thing. And I would get up in the morning. I would go to work. I would get home around non-cloth. at night, we would eat and we would start our day again. On weekends, which was Sunday and Monday, we would go in and clean the salon thoroughly. And then we would go downtown and shop for the salon. Wow. And at the time I had formulated my own deep treatment in which became a big hit with the

client. So we used to go down to Canal Street and buy aesthetic jars like skincare jars, just white small jars so we can put our treatment in, sterilize them, put our treatment. treatment in so we can sell them. So it was 24-7. There was no day off, no vacation for almost six years. And he was working at the restaurant because you guys needed the money? Yes. The money that he made was to take care of a life, our home. Tell me about, okay, so you open the salon and you start to formulate hair treatments, particularly for women with curly hair because you had curly hair. Tell me about what you were making. I mean, like, what were you mixing together? Before the salon opened, I had formulated the deep treatment, and that was part of my reputation

when I worked freelance. And it was a shampoo, or it was like a... A deep treatment is an actual conditioner, so if your hair is dried or fried, you want to feed it. And this is a treatment where you put it into your hair, and you use the shower cap, and you heat it for about 15 minutes on low heat, and let sit there in total 20 minutes and then rinse it out. And that was made of different hair products that were out there that had no waxes, oil, silicones. They were mostly skincare combination of putting in like a detangler, putting in a breathable oil to create the emulsion that I needed to feed the curls.

Was it hard to source ingredients at that time? I mean, today you can just get anything from Amazon, but was it hard to find those things? It was very, very difficult to source it. And when I was in hairdressing school, one of the classes was biology, the courses, the little courses that we took. And I understood a little bit about the chemistry of the hair and what it took to do the hair.

So then I had to find a chemist to help me create the ingredients and formulate it where I could put it in and get it approved for packaging and everything else. So it was very, very difficult to find. And there was nothing for curly hair. out there because the only thing that were out there that people knew how to manage the hair with was to put oil on it. And there were a lot of people just putting olive oils. And some people would put petroleum gel to control some of it. And this was not designed to be a product. It was

just what you needed to use because what? There was nothing on the market that was good enough for available to treat curly hair? Exactly. Exactly. I didn't do it for retail. Retail wasn't even concept. And then we had the market crash. We opened in 84 and 87 the market crashed and all our clients ended up dispersing to different parts of the country, getting some different jobs. And one particular client that had, they ended up moving to California. And she called us on the phone and spoke to Peter and asked Peter if he would be kind enough and send her two jars of the deep treatment. We packed it up, wrapped them up and shipped them out to her. And then And then we started getting phone calls about having, can you ship the deep treatment here?

Can you ship the deep treatment here? And Peter stood one day and he said, why are we doing this? I think we just started a new business. We're going to start a direct response company. Wait, were you advertising in magazines or did you print up a catalog or what? We printed up a catalog for our own clients. And then once we started making a little bit more money and we can afford to advertise. we started advertising in back pages of magazines where they have that like a small eighth of a page ad.

We used to put ads in there. And then we went to quarter page ad. And little by little, that's how we started advertising. Wow. And at what point did the both of you, you and Peter, say, we need to find a manufacturer to help us because our orders are too big for us to do this on our own? That was about, I would say, 90, 91, 92 when we started doing that. And then through the network of the clientele, we were introduced to a gentleman who owned a manufacturing company. His name was Nicos Moriaris, who passed away several years ago.

And he actually had the company called Mana, which is one of the largest manufacturers who did products for Mac, Chanel, everybody. L'Oreal, a lot of products. And he was kind enough. He took us under his wing. And he started making small amount of products for each skew till we grew. And we grew with him when we stayed with him for almost 30 years. Meantime, you, which we didn't mention, you also became a mother to two children in a short period of time. You know, I think they're two years or three years apart.

And I guess at a certain point, I mean, you and Peter decide you want to raise your family in Connecticut. So what did you do? Did you commute back and forth every day from Connecticut to New York City? No. In 91, we ended up taking the direct response company, the mail-order products and the family, and moved to Connecticut. We needed more space. So it was cheaper to find more space in Connecticut warehouse. So we ended up getting a farmhouse, and we ran the mail order out of the farmhouse.

So Peter and the two kids were in Connecticut the whole time. I, in return, stayed in the city for five days and went home on the weekend. So I would get on the train early Tuesday morning, get to New York, stay in New York until Saturday after work, get on a train, and go back to Connecticut. And we did that for almost 16 years. Wow. For 16 years. 16 years. That's what we needed to do.

That's the only thing we could do. And it was difficult. So you were away from your husband and kids for four days a week. Five. And you had to do it for 16 years. That's what it took. Peter had the children. He had the mail order. All the deliveries and supplies went through him. He was running the books from there. He was doing everything. So he had one end. Product formulation. I had the stylist. We had the salon. So we split it right down the middle. and we just put our heads right to the ground and kept on doing it. And you were also still a stylist. I mean, you were still cutting hair every day. Every single day until I decided to stop cutting hair permanently. Every day.

When we come back in just a moment, the business deal that allows Wieda to finally step away from the salon after more than 40 years of styling hair. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. My name is Victor Bamibwe from Platte State, Nigeria. My favorite episode of HIPT is the one with Louis Van Ar. I especially like that episode because it shows the power of education to be a force for social mobilization, a force for change, a force for empowerment. I also like that episode because it shows how someone from a region like mine can succeed by solving heart problems. Thank you very much for HIPT. I really love the podcast.

Please keep up to Google. share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why? A lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at hibt at ID.wondery.com and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks and future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now back to the show. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the the mid-1990s, and Weedadadwe has a thriving salon in New York and a growing line of hair care products. And then she discovers a new source of revenue, teaching other stylists how to cut curly hair.

Hairdresses started hearing about this curly hair salon. People work with curly hair. When you go to hairdressing school, you are not taught how to work with curly hair even until the 90s. So the hairdressers would come in in disguise as clients, into the same. salon to try to get a haircut and try to capture what we are doing so they can go and provide their clients. And after a while, it became apparent. So I used to block any photography in the salon whatsoever. I started sensing, I know that's what's going on. So let's just stop it. This is my product. I want to be able to manage it. I just don't want people going out and just damaging hair. So we launched an education program and it was a certification for hairdressers. So it became a revenue. It became a

completely independent revenue. So we would put their name as an affiliate stylist. Then we were able to send them clients. I mean, it's so interesting because like on the one hand, I'm thinking of you commuting back and forth to Connecticut for the weekend, working in the salon all day, formulating ingredients for products, Peter selling those products. And part of me is like, Wait, why didn't you just focus entirely on products? Why didn't you just pour all of your money that you had into promoting products and turning it into a national brand? It's more complicated than that, of course. But yeah, I'm just wondering why, was that something you and Peter talked about?

No, it wasn't even a thought. That would have taken the wind out of me. That would have taken my soul. It was the connection. It was the relationship. it was the depth. It was so powerful that it meant so much than just the haircut. I've had clients that one particular woman that comes to mind

and still I am in contact with her. I haven't been in a salon for almost 10 years now. She was the first Marine lawyer in New York City. Her husband was a rabbi. She had the curliest hair you could imagine. Could not try a case with her hair down. She had to always pull it back and be somebody. else. And for her to be able to be herself while she's trying the case, that is the ultimate

freedom. And to me, that meant much more, honestly, the money. A curly hair client becomes a client for a lifetime. So products was secondary. Here's how you manage it at home. You know, I'm often asked by people about things like product market fit, you know, or where do I find opportunity. And this is like a classic example of that. Like, you know, most people just were ignoring this enormous opportunity of millions of people with curly hair who weren't being served. And you just had a hunch that there was, because you knew you needed it, that there were people who could use this and who could benefit from this. Absolutely. When I was younger, people used to ask me, like, what made you just do curly hair? And I used to say it's a vendor. And I used to say it's a

vendetta for all the goddamn awful haircut that I have gotten for people not knowing how to do my hair as this is to get them all back to show them how to do it. And when I was going to beauty editors talking to them trying to convince them about curly hair, I've had so many eye rolls. I have had so many, thank you, very discreetly, we'll think about it, trying to get me out of their face literally because I was so energized and going crazy with them, telling them, like, look at what you're missing. I was literally screaming at them sometimes. from my passion. Huh.

But then, I think in the late 1990s, I think you really turned a corner with your products because you released something called the Climate Control Collection. And this is a line of products that helped, I guess, people with curly hair, right, avoid frizz in humid weather. And I think even to this day, it's like one of your best-selling products.

It basically, like, really opened up that part of your business, right? It definitely opened the doors to be accepted with the editors and everywhere else. The original climate control gel. It's a gel that you put in your hair after you shampoo in condition to style your hair and that works with the moisture in the air, with the humidity. So the actual polymers will expand in humidity, open up like a Pac-Man, if I can say that. Yeah.

And then when they go indoors, from the humidity, they retract, holding the cuticle down. So it actually manages your fritz. And they, I remember when I was into it. introducing it, that's when the beauty editors started opening up to me and really accepting. And then hair company started coming after me and L'Oreal want me to work with them with their garnier line and bumble and bumble with their. And then all of a sudden, a lot of companies, Unilever I worked with. Wow.

To help out with their product line in Latin America. But that particular product definitely gave us a huge jump. Yeah. All right. So you've got this hot product and you've got the salon. and, you know, it's a crazy life that you're living back and forth between your family and New York City, you know, for days at a time. And then in 2001, on 9-11, I guess you happened to be home in Connecticut. But I think you literally had people walking into the salon on that day with, you know, like covered in dust and ash.

Oh, my God. I had stayed in Connecticut that day. My kids had just gotten on the buses to go to school, and everybody was glued to a television set. It was Peter. He had three other people working with him and the UPS guy, and that's when I found out about September 11th. I called up immediately the salon. Latisha, our manager, was there. She said, two stylists made it in.

The rest have not made it in. It's very, very quiet, and we can't get home. All of a sudden, people started walking in covered in dust, head to tell, white. completely dusty, would just come in and say, can you wash my hair? Can you wash my hair? And my stylist spent all day long with people coming in and just getting grinsed. They were just in trance. And in the back of their head, that's how comfortable that place was for them,

that they just went up to get washed. Lettisha said there was no conversation whatsoever, no conversation with the stylist, nothing. Just towel dry their hair, they comb it, put it back, turn around, walk out. Everybody was a zombie. I arrived the very next day. I was able to get in. My whole team and I were down making sandwiches for the firefighters.

That was an unbelievable experience. And yes, the salon was a haven, comfort for our clients. Wow. Not much longer after that. You got a very, very scary diagnosis, almost the same diagnosis that your mother had that eventually took her life, also breast cancer. I think you were roughly the same age. Exact age. That she was when she was diagnosed, yeah.

Yep. I was 46 years old. And April, I had a bilateral mastectomy. I was diagnosed with breast cancer like my mom did. And I decided to go the extreme because I didn't want to. to be a cancer patient having seen what she went through. But that was a very difficult time for me. I read that you, of course, you had very aggressive surgery treatment, and it's a long process. There's all kinds of treatments and surgeries that go into, particularly what you went through.

This was a five-year battle. I mean, I think you were on medication for about five years. Is that right? I was, and I went right back to work after three months, which was not recommended. But I came right back, and we ended up continuing education and the grueling schedule, but it was five solid years. Wow. And I think I was helped by many people, by my mom, and by medicine was very different. When my mother had it, they were these choices. I mean, you've been a survivor now for, you're now 20 years survivor.

I mean, more than 20 years. 22. Yeah. And I read that initially, you didn't tell many people. You kept it to yourself, which I can understand. I can really relate to that. That you actually didn't, you wanted to be very private and you didn't want that many people to know. I didn't want to have that stigma around me.

I wanted to move on and go forward in just my comments. concentration was who I am and what I want, what I loved doing, and I didn't want that to be in my way. I didn't want my team to know the, my team knew what I had, but they didn't know the level that I had because I didn't want them to fear their careers. I didn't want them to worry about what was going to happen to them. In having to tell the children, I wanted to make sure that we told our kids, but also to comfort them without lying to them. You know, like I'm going to be okay. I'm going to do everything that's needed and you're going to see me at home for a while and this is what I'm going through. Wow. All right. Meantime, you did not give yourself a whole lot of time to get out of the

business. You were back pretty quickly and you guys eventually move into a larger facility in Manhattan, I think 5,000 square feet. But I want to jump ahead slightly to around 2007. From what I've read, around 2006, your revenue is estimated to be around $10 million. So you guys had a really significant business between the salon and the products. And I have to imagine, you started to get inquiries from other, you know, from investors, private equity, people saying, hey, do you want to maybe have some kind of joint venture or are you looking for investors? Or did that start to happen? Yes, it did. That started to happen before 207.

Every once in a while we would have a particular company out of Boston would reach out to us and talk to us and tell us what they could do with us and help us grow the business, and we just weren't interested. The business was doing really well. It was only Peter and I. But the expansion of the business and the demand was getting so big that we needed to get a team in there, and it was very difficult to hire a sea level team. Now, mind you, we were the sea level team, whether we were the chief of sanitation,

or the chairman of the board or the CFO. We were all the Cs, all two of us. We seed everything. We laugh about it all the time. But we needed more help. At that time, I was doing Sephora. I was doing home shopping network. I was flying around teaching certified salons with the team.

It was nonstop. So that sounded wonderful that we could get help. And then we decided opening our eyes and considering the fact of having an inequitaph. firm. And actually, we had one out of San Francisco join us in 207. And tell me about how that happened. I mean, I'm assuming they came to you with some, you know, a nice potential check, which would be amazing, but probably there was more to the story. There's a lot more to it. I didn't know the process. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I couldn't imagine giving up the actual business itself. I couldn't imagine changing it. So when the equity, we had several people reach out to us. And one of my clients was from ran merger and acquisition for UBS. And I had told them we're getting approached by a couple of equity firms. And he said to me, do you know the process of it? I looked at him and I'm like, no, Walter. I don't know anything about it. So Peter and I got a quick lesson and decided that J.H. is the equity firm we joined.

And he had did the whole process for us. And he explained it where it's like you put them all up in the gate and you open the doors and they go running and see the one who gives you the best bed. But it wasn't about the money. It was who was going to work harmoniously with us and to be able to keep the integrity of what we were doing. I mean, by that point, you'd been in business for 23 years. You'd started the salon in 84 and they bought a majority stake in the company. And I imagine, you know, you'd been through campus. answer and you were you had worked like crazy for so long. I imagine that part of you was just like

kind of feeling excited about maybe just stepping back a little bit. Yes. And eventually I wanted to completely stop at the age of 55. So in the back of our head, that was always the plan. So did you step back right away? I mean, they bought a majority share of the company. No. No. I need step back till 2014. I was in the salon, cutting hair, living the same life that I did, because it's exactly what I love to do. Wow. And my poor partners were not allowed to set foot in this salon. They were only allowed to be in the corporate office. And whatever discussion they wanted to do was in the corporate office, no one was allowed to come into the salon. That was my domain, my kingdom, and my team. And I respect them for that. And eventually, when we,

decided to move on to, you know, just completely sell the company. That's when I stepped back. And I think that happened in 2018, yeah. But I have to imagine that when the private equity group, when they bought, when JH partners bought a majority stake in WEDAD, they were really interested in expanding the product line, right? It wasn't, I mean, they probably weren't focused on building out a bunch of salons. They really wanted to get the products on shelves of stores. Yes. This is fascinating. The difference of the Widod salon and the regular hair salon. The way the Weidat Salon worked was, you came in as a client. We educated you. We were the doctors of curly hair, and we prescribed what you can use for your hair to maintain what we did that you loved. When they came in, they infused the money to expand more skews into, yes, that's exactly what they wanted to do. And it took them five years to understand in order for those extra skews to be sold, you couldn't just place them on the shelf.

They had to be educated because they need to understand it. And, you know, when you partner with an equity firm, they come in with their spreadsheet. That's how they know how to work. And it was fun watching them and growing with them. I'm sure I wasn't their best fan. But they got the products onto the shelves of Altos. and, you know, big beauty stores, whereas before it was mainly direct-to-consumer or in the salons. Yeah, they had the financial power to be able and the connection and the network to get in there.

Absolutely, they expanded it and thank God for them, yeah. So 2018, another group outright acquires Wieda. And I think that was also the year where you're officially your ties to this brand end, right? you kind of are officially out because they buy all the shares up. Right. So tell me a little bit about life after we died. I mean, you yourself said it was the feeling that I could give people. It was this idea that I could transform the way they felt about themselves and how they looked.

And it was emotional. People would literally hug me and cry. Now, I mean, you step out and you don't have that feedback as a moment. much. What was that like for you when you decided to kind of retire? Physically, I was exhausted. Yeah. You're on your feet all day for 40 years. Yes, 41. I was exhausted. Emotionally, I was ready to step back, but I am right now at the height of what I want. I am helping, first of all, my main team of Wudad, the hairdressers that worked with me for 21 years. Most of them have their own studios to which I am consulting, working with them,

and helping them build. A lot of the certified hairdressers that were certified by Widod are in contact with me still to this day, not only about Widod, about how to expand their business. So I consult now. So I'm pretty busy. I'm very happy giving forward, going onward, and I really enjoy it. Is your consulting life a business? Or is it a business? Or is it? entirely volunteer. Volunteer. I've had so many angels in my business who have helped us. For an example, the women who ran all the direct response for Hearst publication in the back of their magazines, those little mail mail orders. We had no idea how to do that. She was a client who had curly hair and would sit with Peter and teach them exactly how to do it. We're self-taught. And me, just giving back to

women entrepreneurs, I will do anything and everything to help them out. It's such a wonderful, gratifying feeling to see them grow. Yeah. You now live in Florida, I think. Between Florida and Rhode Island. And Rhode Island. They go back and forth. And you and Peter are still married, I think, more than 40 years now. Yes. Yes, 42. And we're both still alive. We're having killed each other. Yeah. I mean, how did you manage that? What, because, Because the story you tell about how you guys built the business, and part of it was you were apart from each other for four days a week for 17 years. Did you guys ever get down to the wire and really just have it out? Or did you just both stay in your lanes?

And that's how it worked. We definitely stayed in our lanes. He was the CEO, CFO, C-O-C, everything you can imagine. I was the creative artist, the educator, the formulator, the trainer. and it's just completely, completely separate worlds in two separate places. And that's how it worked. Yes. I mean, that's why it worked.

Yes. And if there was any discussion about work, it was decision that need to be done, how to move forward on something, it was at the dinner table which involved our kids, which now we hear was a great fun for them to be able to hear and learn about that. Yeah. And definitely at the beginning, you both had the right skill sets because, He came from restaurant management, and you were like a chef. And so he knew how to work with that kind of person.

He could manage the front of the house while you manage the back, while you're actually making the food, which was hair in this case. Yes. Our toughest time is this retirement where we're both home together. It's like, whoa. Huh. We, Dad, when you think about, you know, going from this. this kid from Rhode Island who was an immigrant who barely spoke English at 11 or 12 to building up a career as a hairdresser to building your own salon and then turning it into a really significant brand in this space for curly hair.

How much of where you are today do you attribute to the crazy hard work you put in, which was so hard? And how much do you think has to do with just the timing and getting lucky? I think quite a bit is timing. A lot of people work very, very hard and do not get the chances to be able to build. I think timing has a lot to do with it. I think luck was a great deal of help but work. You had to be there and you had to be doing the work. And I think when you work very hard and you're really focused in just doing exactly from the heart,

not doing it for the sake of doing it, doing it because you love what you're doing, that does get picked up and it gets rewarded. That's Weedad Wise, co-founder, along with her husband Peter, of Weedad, salons, and hair care products. She and Peter also founded a charitable organization called Curles for a Cure, which donates money to breast cancer research. And by the way, even though Weidot no longer works at the company that bears her name, she still catches herself acting like she does. For an example, if I was in Ulta the other day and some of the bottles weren't displayed the way I used to display my shelf, I redid the whole shelf.

It's not my company. It's just that's the way I wanted it. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter at gairoze.com, also free and also filled with amazing insights

from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Ramtin Arablewe. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Malia Agadello. Our engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Quasi Lee. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Seifer, John Isabella, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.