This week, we're sitting down with Murphy Bishop. Murphy is the Co-Found and CEO of The Better Skin Co in Mobile, AL. Listen to this week's episode to hear his story.
Transcript:
Murphy Bishop:
Hi. I'm Murphy Bishop, II. I am the cofounder and CEO of the Better Skin Co. and the founder of Coastal Domain, affordable living here on the Gulf Coast.
Marcus Neto:
Yay! Well, welcome to the podcast, Murphy.
Murphy Bishop:
Thanks. It's so awesome to be here.
Marcus Neto:
Yeah, no, it's funny because we've never met before, that I remember, sometimes. But we actually met answering somebody's thread on social media and I just thought your answers were very poignant and as somebody who runs a couple of different businesses, I thought you were being very gracious in how you were handling what the person was saying. So I'm glad to have you here, because I think you're doing some really good things in Mobile.
Murphy Bishop:
Thank you. It's a super important conversation to have, and the way you and I met on social media, which I think is incredible, because that's the way of the world now, I think that we met over a conversation about entrepreneurs and I'm a serial entrepreneur. And I think that as the world looks at entrepreneurs and businesses, they're, in my mind, we have the small, the medium and the mega, and I think that as a society, the conversation that you and I were involved in, I think as a society we have to look at those different segments differently and figure out how do we interact with each segment and make it work for the population as a whole?
Marcus Neto:
Right. Yeah, and I mean, just full disclosure what we were discussing was the idea of a $15.00 an hour minimum wage. And so we don't typically get into things like that on the podcast but just so we're not getting like "well, what were they talking about" kind of questions. So and if you want to discuss that, invite me to lunch or invite Murphy to lunch, or both of us to lunch, and we'll talk about it. But why don't we get started. Why don't you tell us the story of Murphy. Where are you from? Are you from Mobile? Where'd you go to high school? Did you go to college? Just some backstory about who you are.
Murphy Bishop:
Absolutely. So I'm from Mobile adjacent. I grew up out in Grand Bay, Alabama, which is, if anybody knows about Grand Bay, it's not grand, nor is there a bay. But it's-
Marcus Neto:
Actually, that's funny that you say that. I never thought about that.
Murphy Bishop:
Right, right. It's a super peaceful place, where it's a great place to be a kid. But when you become a teenager and a young adult, you realize that there's not a lot happening there. So I, my first job was at the Dairy Queen in Grand Bay, which no longer exist, and I worked, I worked all summer long, saved up enough money to buy my first Volkswagen Super Beetle. And then I used that Super Beetle to get to my new job in Mobile. And that was sort of my progression to sort of leave Grand Bay. So I went to college in Birmingham, Alabama, at Birmingham-Southern. And after Birmingham-Southern, took a job with Parisian, a retailer that no longer exists, but it was a fine Southern retailer. I had a degree in finance, and quite honestly they paid more than the banks, and at that age money is everything. And they were moving me to a larger city, which was Nashville. So I took it, and that sort of started my travel around the States and that's how I got into the business that I'm currently.
Marcus Neto:
That's cool. Now, I have to ask, what year was the Super Beetle? Do you remember?
Murphy Bishop:
Oh my, it was a 1973 lime green Super Beetle. And back then we had a catalog called JC Whitney, which sold everything for cars. So I ordered the spoiler, I ordered the souped up headlights. It was a pretty phenomenal car when it ran.
Marcus Neto:
So my very first car was a 1974 Super Beetle, but it was convertible, which is why I asked. I very much am familiar with JC Whitney. Now instead of being a beautiful lime green, mine was primer gray, and stayed primer gray until I sold the stupid thing, because I could never get it... I couldn't keep it running. I had replaced the engine and did a bunch of other stuff and then just decided I needed something that was a little bit more dependable. But I went the route of like removing the rear seat and putting big subwoofers in it, and doing all this stuff. So, but yeah, it's funny. So you got your start with Parisian, and because they're... for those of you that aren't familiar, that was very similar to like a Dillard's. So if you're not from the area and don't remember, or if you're just too young... because they existed up until probably about five or six years ago or so, if I remember correctly.
Murphy Bishop:
Well, correct. And by name only there are still two that exist today. But they were bought out by a couple of different people over time. And when I was young, they sort of called it the Nordstrom of the South. They had this phenomenal training program, this phenomenal customer service program. And when they hired me, I was managing juniors and kids, which if you know anything about juniors or kids, it's a terrible thing to manage. And so like most pompous college graduates, I went to my store manager and I said, "Look, I didn't spend four years in school to put up a sale sign on a kids' rack, people to come and then me to clean up after them." I said, "So I think I'm going to quit and go find my joy, whatever that might be." And my store manager said to me, "Look, I have something for you. We're going to give you cosmetics." And in cosmetics there are no sales. It's all promotional, marketing, and what-have-you.
Murphy Bishop:
And at Parisian, we were the first Parisian in Nashville, so they went around to all of the different department stores and they hired the very stoic cosmetic women that you grew up seeing. And the reason they hired them is because these women had a book of business, and back then there were no computers, so your book of business was handwritten, it was everything. And these women made a lot of money. Most of them made more than twice what I made as a manager, but they brought 30 years of buying history with them. So she gave me cosmetics, and it was really trial by fire, because I was super young, had no idea what I was doing. And these women murdered me, until I figured it out and figured out how to get them all on the same page and sort of get this business ticking.
Murphy Bishop:
And during that process, I would see my cosmetic vendors come and go. They would drive in from Atlanta, they would take me to lunch, and we would strategize the season, figure out our promotions, our gift with purchases, and then they would drive away. And it was this beautiful thing because they all had company cars and they had company credit cards. And they got to come to the store and leave the store, whereas I was stuck at that store. And I thought, this is a much better career path than what I'm doing now. So I made friends with them all until I got a job as one of their assistants and that moved me to Atlanta which started my career in personal care.
Marcus Neto:
Wow, very cool. Well, you mentioned something. So go back, because you mentioned Dairy Queen. So we now know what your first job was, but were there any lessons that you still carry with you from your time at Dairy Queen?
Murphy Bishop:
That's a great question. What I learned from my parents... because we all come from different backgrounds, and there's a lot of words that people throw around about your background or where you come from, whether the word is privilege or this or that. But I started my job at Dairy Queen at 15. So I wasn't old enough to even work inside, so at that time Dairy Queen was the only fast food restaurant in Grand Bay, so it was packed and there was always a line to get in the parking lot. I was the garbage man. So my sister Tina worked inside and she got to make the ice cream and serve the ice cream. So she got me a job as the garbage man. So all I did all day long was empty garbage cans, put them in the dumpster, climb in the dumpster, push it all down. And that was sort of my first real job. And I loved it. I loved it. I didn't mind that I was doing garbage. All I knew is that I was getting paid, I had this great job, and that I was busy all day.
Murphy Bishop:
And I think that the lesson that I took from that is is you just got to do what you got to do. I mean, back then I was jumping around in the dumpster, fast-forward 25 years later, I'm sitting front row at fashion week with great brands like Butter LONDON, Bare Escentuals and all of these thing. And at the end of the day, it's all a job, and you have to start somewhere, and you have to turn that into whatever you want it to be. No one's going to come along and say like, "Okay, this is next." You have to create your next, and that's sort of what I learned from that.
Marcus Neto:
I mean, one of the things that I think, and you mentioned something else too that I kind of wanted to touch on, but one of the things that I often think people forget is that no matter what you're doing, there's something to be learned in doing it. So whether it's jumping up and down in a garbage can to try and make more room, or whether it's, for us, like selling somebody on a million dollars worth of advertising, it doesn't matter what it is, there's something to be learned in both of those things. And I've actually carried that with me as well. I worked my way through college at Home Depot and Lowe's. And you mentioned that they had a great training program about customer service and all that stuff. Well, back in the day, believe it or not, because if you walked in there today you wouldn't have that same experience, but Home Depot and Lowe's had extremely good customer service training programs.
Marcus Neto:
But I remember that because that's how we treat our clients comes from today and it's oftentimes some of the things that I'm... I'm not going to name any names, but like with our employees, we have to train them on how to interact with clients and stuff like that. And so it's just I always like asking that question because I think people don't realize there are things that you learn in every step of your journey. There are things, whether it's how to treat people or how to mop a floor. You're going to take that with you for the rest of your life. Well, how did you get stated and which came first? So the renovation business or the skin care business?
Murphy Bishop:
That's a great question. Skin care, personal care came first. I was working for Victoria Secret. Victoria Secret used to have a beauty division and it was started by a lady named Robin Burns who was legendary in our business and she had been the former CEO and president at Estee Lauder. So when she launched Victoria Secret Beauty, I went with her, and my territory was Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky and we had these freestanding stores which no longer exist. Well, I was driving Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky every day, which is a tremendous amount of driving, because it's not far enough to fly. And I was reading a series of books called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And it's a real estate investment book and it basically is in layman's terms. And at that time we all still had a newspaper, and it said, "Get out your newspaper, go through the for sale and find yourself a multiunit building that you can get into." And that's exactly what I did.
Murphy Bishop:
So one day I was sitting at a Chili's when Chili's was still a thing, going through the Saturday paper, and I found my first investment property. And that's how I did it. And people think investing in property is incredibly difficult. But it's not if you research how to do it. So I bought my first building with an FHA loan which was just 3% down. And so that sort of got my interest started in real estate. So I bought a building in Tennessee at that time. And then I sort of put it on hold for the next 20 years. And when I started my own business, I used all of my retirement, I cashed out all of my savings, my 401(k), at great penalties, but that's just sort of what you do when you're an entrepreneur. You just sort of go for it.
Murphy Bishop:
And when I had the opportunity to get back into real estate, I already knew how safe real estate was and so I did it, so I started investing. I had bought some property in Seattle, sat on it for many years while Amazon exploded, sold that and then just sort of parlayed that into properties on the Gulf Coast. And so my personal care business had been up and running but the real estate is sort of my fallback for retirement, if you will.
Marcus Neto:
Yeah. I'm of the same mindset. And I think it's funny to hear you say that you didn't realize just how safe real estate was. But I mean, the truth is it is, as long as you don't do anything stupid, and real estate is usually going to head in the right direction. It's always going to go up, unless something really weird happens. So... now do you remember... actually, you know what, how did you get started specifically in the personal care? Now, you told us about your experience, but the actually "hey, here's... I formed my LLC." Like I can't imagine coming up with products and actually having to come up with a brand for all that and all that stuff. So describe that to us a little bit.
Murphy Bishop:
Sure. Well, in this business, as in any business, in today's world we're driven by social media, press, all of those things. And I had worked my way up to being a CEO at a venture capital company. And I could have started my own business 10 years ago, but I didn't have a story. And without a story you can't have a business in today's world. Because if you don't have a story, there's no one to listen to it. You've got to have something for people to listen to and to relate to. And I met my business partner Natalya, who was from Uzbekistan, and I was at her house for Thanksgiving, and she had this great meal prepared and we were eating, having this great time. And as people left, she would scoop up two scoops of this white cream, put it an old school margarine tub, they would hand her $40 and they would leave. I thought they were giving her... I thought she was selling her leftover mashed potatoes. And I was like, "Natalya, in America we give away our leftovers. Like we don't sell our leftovers. Just give [crosstalk 00:14:42]."
Marcus Neto:
Especially at a premium price, man.
Murphy Bishop:
Right. And she's like, "Oh no, that's not mashed potatoes. That's this cream I make." And she was a nurse and an aesthetician in Uzbekistan who came to America, brought her family, supported them by starting her practice, by selling this cream. She got her citizenship. It was at a very trying time because we were heading into an election cycle. And she's like, "And so this is my cream." And she's like, "In Uzbekistan I made it with the things that we could readily get because we were under communism." She said, "And so in America I do the same thing." And so I took some home, I tried it, and it was pretty phenomenal, and it truly was this great multipurpose cream. And a light went off in my head and I said, here's my story, here's a woman who's come to America, she supports her family, she has women lining up for this cream, she has 20 years of history with it. People should know about this. That was a much more powerful story than Murphy Bishop who worked his way up, became a CEO and launched a cream.
Murphy Bishop:
She had a cream that had a purpose and was working, it was already in the marketplace. So I convinced her to let me take it to a lab, we modernized it, and we brought it to market. And I come from the retail world where brick and mortar was king, and so in my mind we were going to put it in some retailers and then just let it ride. There's a great product on the market called Egyptian Magic. It has this great story about this pharaoh, it's all made up, but it's still a great story. And they sell Egyptian Magic in every store on the planet, from the Beverly Hills Beauty Supply to Costco. And I said, "I want us to be the modern day Egyptian Magic." Now, at that time, the world, probably six, seven years ago, was still probably 75% brick and mortar, 25% online. Well, now, it's completely shifted.
Murphy Bishop:
So we launched with just this one cream, which was going to be our only product. However, the paradigm shift, everything happened so fast to online that we had to shift our business model and add additional products to it. And so that first year we were picked up by the Wendy Williams Show as the holiday gift pick. And when you do TV retail, it's very rare that you sell anything at full price. But on Wendy Williams, since were just a holiday gift suggestion, they said, "This is the Mirakle Cream" and they spelled it, we spell it with a K. And so Wendy was like, "And when you're looking for it, remember it has a K in it." So when people googled it, we came up. We sold thousands of jars. And then they reran that after Christmas and we sold several thousand more jars. And so that really just sort of launched our business and that's how we got our start.
Marcus Neto:
Wow, that is really cool. Yeah, because that doesn't just happen.
Murphy Bishop:
No, no.
Marcus Neto:
I mean, that is really cool. Well, you've already kind of answered the next question, but maybe I'll ask it anyway, just in case there's something that you want to add to it. But do you remember the first time that you had a sale or that maybe when you launched the website or something along those lines that made you think, yeah, we made the right move? Like something that affirmed, because you talked about, well, I know that now I had a story. But there's still kind of like a real risk. But do you remember that first time on the other side of having formed the business where you were like, okay, yeah, this is it, we got something here?
Murphy Bishop:
I do. And there's a couple of myths out there about business. Someone at one point said, "If you build something, they will come." That's completely not true. There are probably millions of web stores out there and a web store is no different than a brick and mortar store. You have to let people know the store is there and get them to your store, or else it's just floating out in the universe, right? So we would, when we first launched, I said, "We must do $500 a day or it's not worth it." Well, in my mind we were just going to put the website out there and the $500 was going to come. That is absolutely not how it works. We had to clearly launch our social media advertising, our Google advertising, our influencer program. We had to launch all of that to even let the world know that we were out there. So in the beginning, your friends and family buy it because they have to.
Marcus Neto:
Right. Otherwise, they're not friends and family.
Murphy Bishop:
Right. And then you have to tell the rest of the world about it, so that they'll find it. So I think Wendy Williams was a huge win for us, but right after that the Huffington Post, which was still a big deal at the time, did an expose, or did an entire profile on Natalya for the Inspirational Women Project, how she came to America, she brought her family, she swam to the Statue of Liberty, and she got her citizenship and now she's launched this product. And after that the orders started rolling in. Well then, since the Huffington Post had done a premier article on us, other people followed. Back then Rachel Zoe was huge, so Rachel Zoe followed. Then it was Refinery29. And now today if someone says, "Here's your top 10 list of creams," you might get a couple of orders. Five years ago, if Buzzfeed said, "These are the best 10 creams on the planet," you got hundreds of orders because there wasn't a new top 10 list every day.
Murphy Bishop:
So after the Huffington Post, we had this sort of windfall of press, which created a windfall of orders. And then I knew that we had something. And then the reviews started coming in. And the reviews were good. And people said, "You know what, I do use this as my day cream, as my night cream, and as my eye cream. Thank you for telling me I don't have to have five products." Because at the time Korean Beauty was blowing up. But Korean Beauty says you have to do eight steps to have good skin. And our message is the opposite of that. You have to wash your skin, and moisturize it, and you could have good skin. So I knew after that initial Huffington Post that we were on to something, and it was sort of up to us to keep the story alive, so that more and more and more people would know about it.
Marcus Neto:
That is so cool, man. Man, you said something in there, and I'm trying to go back and think, because there was something that I kind of wanted to add, but I don't know, maybe it'll come back to me. I'm getting old so I'm forgetting things, so... Now if you were talking to someone that wanted to get started in running their own business, what's the one bit of wisdom that you would impart to them?
Murphy Bishop:
That's a great question, because running your own business is not for the faint of heart. I think that you have to have a survival plan. Like my survival plan was cash in the small amount of retirement I had, sell my car, and work at night so I could fund this daytime dream. So I think my piece of advice would be unless you just have money for that business, you have to figure out how are you going to live while you do it, because when you're launching a business you have to have a clear mind. You have to be able to focus on that business day in and day out. And I would also say don't ever start a business with a contingency plan, because a lot of people say, "If I start this business and it doesn't work out, I'm going to do X, Y and Z." At that point, you've already failed, because you're already planning on failing.
Murphy Bishop:
So I think when you go in, you have to go all in. So make sure that you can cover your basic needs, and make sure that you just have a clear plan of what starting it looks like. And I would also say to people starting a business, do your research and use your resources. I talk to new people who are considering being founders all the time and I'm happy to give them the information that I know, because I had mentors that did it for me. So I would really just say sort of know where you're going, know what you're going to do until you get there, and then use the resources that are around you to help you get there.
Marcus Neto:
Yeah. No, that's good. I did actually, because something you said in this last answer kind of sparked, going back to what I was looking for. And it's that ideas are cheap, and it's the execution that actually gets you there, right? And so many times people are so protective of an idea that they have. And I'll just flat out tell them, "I'm sorry, but your idea is probably not unique. I've probably already heard it 15 times. It's the execution that's going to actually make a difference." And even if you had two people with the same idea, depending on how they actually execute it, it could be two completely different products by the time they get to market and actually build a business and so on and so forth. I mean, it's amazing to me, and I just wanted to kind of reiterate that, because if somebody tells you something or if you share something with somebody, that doesn't give away what it is that you have, right? It's the execution that'll actually define you and make a difference. So, anything that you can talk about that you're currently working on in the business?
Murphy Bishop:
Yeah, sort of to go back to your point about ideas, one of the things that we as a company say every day is... one of the things we say about our competition is, we don't try to compete with them, we try to go around them. We're smart enough to know that we can't compete with Estee Lauder, with L'Oreal and all those guys-
Marcus Neto:
I wonder why. With their billions of dollars of revenue.
Murphy Bishop:
Exactly, so we as a small company think, how can we be nimble, how can we be quick, and how can we go around them? And so for all of the people that are out there that are thinking about starting a business on limited funds, just think about that with your competitors. Instead of saying, "How am I going to compete with X, Y and Z?" Think about "How do I go around them?" Because there's plenty of room to go around them and there's plenty of money to be made when you do go around them. And what was your question?
Marcus Neto:
Well, they're going to focus on... And we can go back to that. They're going to focus on the masses, but there's still a ton of money. So a number of years ago, and I wish I could remember... I should probably look it up. But there was a book that was written on kind of long tail business ideas, right? And so instead of going where the mass of people is, actually keying off of like these little niches, off of that. There's still tons of money, millions and tens of millions of dollars to be made in building a business on those things, so you're right on that. But the question was, are you currently working on anything that you can share with us? Are you currently working on anything with the business?
Murphy Bishop:
Sure, sure. There's a couple things we're working on. First of all, our entire strategy as a company has changed. As I mentioned earlier, we previously were heavily retail-focused. So as a business, our number one customer is Costco. And we love Costco. Costco is huge. We love them, we appreciate them, we thank them for everything they have done for us. However, they are a big box retailer. So our goal as a business is to become completely digitally self-supporting by the end of 2022. So we are doing everything possible with our influencers, our digital advertising, optimizing our website, to be a direct-to-consumer business. We will never walk away from Costco, but if they walk away from us, we want to know that our business is still up and running. So that's a strategy change that's in the works, and I would encourage any new business that's coming out to be digital first. We were not digital first, just because of where I came from, but we're evolving to that.
Murphy Bishop:
As far as like new products, of course we have a three year calendar for new products. One of the things we're committed to as a company, we're committed to only launching products that matter. If you are a L'Oreal or a Lauder and you have 300 products to fill the pipeline, we celebrate that. That's not us. We might launch three things a year, in a good year. So we have a new product launch coming at the beginning of next month called Klayzyme. We have a big editor event coming up. It's a mixture of clay and enzymes, so it's pretty revolutionary. Again, it's multifunctional. We're doing this great press event, it's a Zoom event centered around Mardi Gras and we have tons of editors signed up for it. So we have that coming up. And that's sort of our big launch for the beginning of the year, and it will really help sort of drive our pivotal change into digital first.
Marcus Neto:
That's cool. And people may be confused by that, but what you find when you run a business is if any one client makes up too much of a percentage of your business, you become fearful, because if they decide to pull, you're dead, right? And so even as an agency, we're constantly looking at like, okay, who's our biggest client? You either need to add more of those big clients or you need to add a bunch of little or smaller clients that will help feed you if something goes wrong with that. So, why don't you... yeah, who is one person that motivates you from the business world, and I'm not talking about Mobile, I'm just talking about like you're in the line at the Publix, you see somebody on a magazine, you're thinking, oh that's right, I want to hear what that person has to say.
Murphy Bishop:
You know what, I love this question. And if you come to my house, you will see a lot of photography of different icons in the industry, and a lot of mine revolve around personal care icons. There's Madam C.J. Walker who started the first African American haircare line and became the first African American billionaire. I follow her story, or she's obviously no longer here, but I've really studied that. I study, and this sounds ridiculous, but I study Anna Wintour backwards and forwards, because she's a master of what she does. And you don't get to the top without knowing how to get to the top. And she's gotten to the top, been at the top, and stays at the top, and she's of a certain age where those people don't normally get to stay at the top. So I study her. I study Karl Lagerfeld. I have meticulously studied Estee Lauder and Elizabeth Arden to see what drove them.
Murphy Bishop:
And then to bring it down a few notches, I also really focus on people who are making it happen now today. I look a lot at my business partner Natalya and what she did to endure to get here. I focus a lot on new startups and what they're doing to sort of push their way in. So I really sort of have like a high, medium, low strategy of who I'm looking at. Sure, I look at the people like Jeff Bezos and I see what they're doing, and I really look at the technology on Amazon and see where it's going next, because I know that our website should be going there too. So I think you really have to sort of have a broad spectrum view and you have to take a little bit, kind of going back to our initial conversation of how we got here with this whole minimum wage thing, is you have to look at the little guy, the medium guy, and the mega guy, because they're all doing something that counts or they wouldn't be here.
Marcus Neto:
Yeah, and I guess with the mega guys you're trying to figure out how you can make that apply.
Murphy Bishop:
Right.
Marcus Neto:
And that's really cool. Are there any books, podcasts, people or organizations that you haven't mentioned that have been helpful in moving you forward?
Murphy Bishop:
Sure. So like I said, I read a lot of biographies. I love to know people's stories because I think history is very valuable. Most of the podcasts I listen to, I'm embarrassed to say, are like true crime podcasts.
Marcus Neto:
It's important to unwind.
Murphy Bishop:
Yeah, I really use that as sort of my like getaway. And I also read a ton of current... I mean, like everyone else, I'm on my phone all the time. So if a new blog post comes in, if a new piece of editorial comes in, I really delve into it to see what they're talking about. In the media world, we have really shifted where now it's now a pay for play game, whereas you used to pay for your spot in Vogue, you'd pay, who knows, $100,000 for a quarter of a page. Well, now if you are going to be on Refinery29 or on Rachel Zoe, or on one of these great blogs, more than likely they're part of your affiliate program so they're getting paid for that information, for that content, because everybody has to monetize to survive.
Murphy Bishop:
So I read all of that to see what are they looking for, because that's our survival line, because click-through in our business is everything. So in our office we're constantly dissecting what people are talking about, why they're talking about it, and how we get them to talk about us. So most of my mornings are I start my days around 5:00 AM and it usually starts with the gym. But then after that with my coffee, I really try to take in about an hour of content. And I try to read content from all different types of sites. Barack Obama once famously said, "Since everything we do is tracked with cookies, you're only ever going to get the information that you want to get." So I make it a point every day to google things that are not part of like my belief system or what I'm looking for, so I can have an algorithm that gives me more of a worldview, because our customers come from everywhere. So I need to speak to them in a way that they will hear and for a way that they're listening.
Marcus Neto:
I love that, man, because I'm of the same mindset. So I'm like when I try and consume, I'm going to multiple websites to see what's the headline, what are they talking about, what are their main points? But it's funny to me when you start doing that, you can see... and we're talking about the news, right, so when you do that, you start to see how they're twisting things in order to make you think a certain thing. And I remember very distinctly about five years ago, I was sitting there, and I used to be a come home, flip the news on, watch it for four hours kind of person, like I'd sit there and I would continue my workday or I'd be making dinner or whatever, but I would have the news on and I would be very engrossed in it.
Marcus Neto:
And I remember sitting there and it was my news station that I was watching at the time. Like I wouldn't aspire to their beliefs anymore. But I was sitting there watching them, and I was like, these motherfuckers or even these guys are trying to get me, because I knew what they were talking about and I knew that they were wrong in what they were saying, because I had educated myself, and it was such a distaste in my mouth that I literally turned it off and I have not... like I do not watch the news. I will go out of my way to like... if I go someplace, if I'm at the barbershop or something like that and they've got the news on, I'll literally ask them to change it.
Marcus Neto:
Now, I'm not a moron, like I do keep up with things, but I do it on my terms and I'll actually go and I'll check all those different websites. And then the other thing too is just in business, like following up with... everybody that's an entrepreneur I think follows Gary V. And there are certain icons that everybody has to follow, but you have to kind of like do that, but also kind of dig in to what's working. So when we turn this mike off, I have some questions for you that I'm just curious about, because it's very seldom that I sit with somebody that has the experience that you have in running a business that is successful online. And so I would just like to kind of pick your brain on that. But anyway, so I'm going to save all my other comments. But what's the one thing or the most important thing that you've learned about running a business?
Murphy Bishop:
The most important thing that I've learned is every day is like your first day. If you don't go into every day with that same amount of passion and that same amount of drive to figure out how to get you to next, you won't get to day two. Because we live in a dynamic world that's changing so quickly. When you start a day, whether it's a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday or a Friday, if you don't go into it with this eternal optimism that you're going to change that business that day, you're not going to make it. There's no time. Like when I say we talk about how do we go around the competition instead of compete with them, the competition never sleeps, you can never sleep. So you really just have to tackle every day like it's your first day and you've still got that excitement of a young entrepreneur who's going to change the world and you're going to make it happen. Because if you don't, you won't get to day two and day three.
Marcus Neto:
Absolutely. And so Murphy, how do you like to unwind?
Murphy Bishop:
That's a really great question.
Marcus Neto:
See, all the other ones were easy but this one is going to be like ah, crap.
Murphy Bishop:
This is the most difficult one, because when you're an entrepreneur, unwinding is really a challenge, and you have to focus on unwinding. And I have a very small team, but I have a phenomenal team. And sort of the way we got to this original discussion was treating your team the right way and doing all those things. And we have a small team and I try very hard to treat them the right way. And I personally try to take at least 24 hours a week where I do nothing that's business-related, and it's usually my Sunday, because I need at least one day to recharge, to clear my head, to spend it really with my family, to spend it with myself. And so I try to have at least one recharge day. I would like to get that up to two recharge days, but for now one is good, and that's my day to unwind and I take advantage of. And I stick to it. I stick to it.
Marcus Neto:
Anything that you like to do on your recharge day?
Murphy Bishop:
Great question. I have a small escape in New Orleans and I love to spend my time down there, open my balcony doors, listen to the music, have a great pot of coffee, hang out with my dogs and do absolutely nothing.
Marcus Neto:
And eat some good food.
Murphy Bishop:
Eat some good food and do nothing. That's a perfect day for me.
Marcus Neto:
I think you and I live parallel lives. So tell people where they can find you or your companies, or where they can just kind of connect.
Murphy Bishop:
Sure. So for the Better Skin Co., you can find us at thebetterskinco.com. That's thebetterskinco.com. You can also find us at bloomingdales.com. We have some products at costco.com. We are also on amazon.com. Couple of things about Amazon, though, if you order from Amazon make sure that it's coming directly from us, because if not, we cannot control where those products come from, so you can check us out there. And then for our property companies, it's all under bleubranddevelopment.com, and which will tell you our properties around town and sort of what we're doing with that. So that's where you can find us. We would greatly appreciate it if you would find us at our website, which is the most helpful to us as a growing brand.
Marcus Neto:
Yeah. For those of you that don't know, I mean, Amazon takes a 15% cut or something, or better.
Murphy Bishop:
Amazon is a great partner and it's a must-have partner, because it's the future. However, Amazon is no different from any other retailer. By the end of the day, their margin is still 50%, 60%, 70%, because you are fighting against all the other brands on there. So if you order from our website, we're at least at a 30% advantage over Amazon ordering. And another thing that I would sort of take us back to the initial discussion of how we got here, when you order a product from a small business, 50 cents of every dollar is gone before it ever hits us, because we have to pay legal, we have to pay regulatory, we have to pay insurance. And I don't say that to say you should spend more and "Oh, woe is me."
Murphy Bishop:
I just say that because I want people to understand the dynamics of how you run a business. So of that dollar, we're left with 50 cents to buy our product, to pay our staff, to pay our warehousing, to pay our office fees, to pay our other overarching international insurance. So when you think about a small business, if you can buy directly from them, that's absolutely the way to go.
Marcus Neto:
Yeah, it's important. I don't think people realize just how much goes into running a business. I oftentimes have discussions, I get asked much like you probably do, "Hey, can I just grab your ear for coffee or something like that?" And you start kind of educating them on all things that you've learned a decade of experience, and it's liability insurance, it's all the different things that... the costs that go into running a business. Yeah, it's amazing to me. So, well, I want to thank you again for coming on the podcast. To wrap up, any final thoughts or comments you'd like to share?
Murphy Bishop:
Yeah, I would like just, first of all, to all of the people that have supported us in these last five years, thank you so much. And for the future people that will support us, thank you so much. And I want to say for the people out there, we had a cream and a dream. We've turned $10,000 into several million dollars, and we operate with no debt, which I'm incredibly proud to say. We're nimble, we're quick, we're fast. And so if you have a dream and you have the ability to think critically, you can bring it to life. So don't be afraid. Just go for it. And know that there are people like me, people like Marcus, we have your back, like America is built on small business. So if you want to change this planet we live on, just follow your dreams and make it happen.
Marcus Neto:
I'm not going to add anything to that. Murphy, I appreciate your willingness to sit with me and share your journey as a business owner and entrepreneur. It's been great talking with you.
Murphy Bishop:
Thank you.
