My name is Evan Carmichael and I believe that the fastest and most effective way to build a business is to model the strategies of people who have already done what you’re trying to do. I call it Modeling the Masters. My last post was: Billionaire Lessons from Ingvar Kamprad (from farmer to IKEA billionaire)

Today we're going to look at how a girl grew up with no money and lived in a small apartment with her parents and her eight siblings. She would go on to become the only woman on Time magazine’s list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the century. This is the story of the woman super entrepreneur Estee Lauder and the top 3 lessons that you can learn from her success.

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"If you don't sell, it's not the product that's wrong, it's you... I didn't get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it." - Estee Lauder

Estée Lauder (July 1, 1906 – April 24, 2004) was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. Most of her childhood was spent helping her parents make ends meet by working at the family's hardware store.

As she grew up she met Joseph Lauder, a textile salesman, whom she married and moved to Manhattan with. After the birth of her first child Lauder didn't want to give up her professional career and experimented with different ingredients to create a skin-care cream for women. She began out of her kitchen and after a year of hard work got her big break: Saks Fifth Avenue agreed to carry her product and it sold out within two days of being put on the shelves.

After fifty plus years at the top of her game, Estee Lauder became the only woman on Time magazine’s list of the 20 most influential business geniuses of the century. In 2009 the Estée Lauder Companies had over $7 billion in revenue, almost 30,000 employees, and it all began at a crowded kitchen table.

Action Item #1: Don't Stop at the First No

Being an entrepreneur means you're going to get a lot of rejection. Whether it's friends and family telling you that your idea will never be successful or prospects and customers telling you they don't want to buy from you, you'll get a lot of no's. Successful entrepreneurs pick themselves back up after rejection and keep improving their products and messaging until they get to a yes.

Lauder was known for her unwavering persistence. When she was trying to expand her European market she arranged a meeting with the manager of Galleries Lafayette, Europe's largest department store. When the manager said no she 'accidentally' spilled her perfume samples on the floor and the store customers started asking how they could buy some of the fragrance. The manager had to give her a contract.

According to Lauder: “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it and I sell it hard... If you have a goal, if you want to be successful, if you really want to do it and become another Estee Lauder, you’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to stick to it and you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing.”

Action Item #2: Love What You Do

Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that one of the keys to their success is that they love what they do. When you really love your business you not only enjoy it more but you put the kind of time and energy in that's needed for a company to take off. You sweat the details and constantly improve your offering not just because it'll make you money but because you love doing it.

Lauder loved her products so much that she paid attention to every little detail. When she got her first deal with Saks Fifth Avenue she stood at the entrance door for an entire week and watched women come in. Nine times out of ten, the first place their eyes would wander would be to the right. Not to the left. Not straight ahead. So she asked for her product to be placed on the right.

According to Lauder: “I love my product. I love to touch the creams, smell them, look at them, carry them with me. A person has to love her harvest if she’s to expect others to love it."

Action Item #3: Sell, Sell, Sell

Not all entrepreneurs are natural salespeople but you have to learn how to sell if you want to build a business of any significant size. More entrepreneurs fail because they can't sell rather than them not having a good product or service.

When Lauder was first getting started she didn't have money to spend on advertising and promotions so she invested her time into product demos. She began at salons, hotels, subway stations, and even people on the street, offering them a free makeover and the chance to buy her products. She eventually moved to sell to the big department stores but it all began with a $0 budget and her grinding out sale after sale.

According to Lauder: “If you put the product into the customer’s hands, it will speak for itself if it’s something of quality... If you don’t sell, it’s not the product that’s wrong, it’s you."

True Story

Once Lauder built up enough money to start a marketing campaign she went to various advertising agencies who all turned her down because her company was too small. With 'only' $50,000 to spent she used her entire budget on samples that she would send out as direct mail campaigns and free gifts with purchases. It proved to be a successful move and she changed the way beauty products were marketed.

More Quotes

You get more bees with honey.

I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.

When you stop talking, you've lost your customer. When you turn your back, you've lost her.

Contest

Congratulations to Amreta for winning the Herb Kelleher card from my Entrepreneur Heroes series by writing a this comment on my last post. Amreta, please contact me so I can get the card sent to you.

For this week's contest I'm going to give away a Tony Hsieh card. Tony co-founded LinkExchange, an ad network that sold to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998 when he was 24. He became an investor in Zappos.com, liked it so much that he joined as CEO and later sold to Amazon.com for $928 million.

To win the card all you have to do is leave a comment below. One winner will be selected at random from the comments.

Are you persistent in your sales approach or do you quit at the first no? Do you love what you do and sweat all the little details? What part of Estee Lauder's message impacted you the most? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Evan Carmichael

To learn more check out my list of Estee Lauder articles or my website, EvanCarmichael.com.