Bobbi Brown on finding her second act: 'I just worked on myself'

Bobbi Brown said she felt defeated when Estée Lauder cut her creative contract at her namesake brand in 2016. The company offered to let her remain the face of the business, but Brown said the contract change left her feeling she had no choice but to leave and that she "felt like such a loser." She advised that it’s normal to feel bad after losing a job, yet she did not stay in a slump.

Brown kept busy, worked with a "spiritual chiropractor" and a business coach, and focused on shifting her mindset. "I just worked on myself — from the inside out," she said. In her memoir Still Bobbi, she writes that resilience began in her teenage years amid her parents' divorce and family mental-health struggles.

Those experiences still cause pain at times, she wrote, but they do not consume or hold her back. Bound by a 25-year noncompete after leaving her former employer, Brown waited until it expired in 2020 and launched Jones Road Beauty in October 2020, expecting a small creative brand and hoping for $1 million in its first year.

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