Dermalogica Founder: Building A Billion Dollar Business While Looking After Your Mental Health

**Jane Wurwand** (0:00)
You know, people who say, how do you balance your life and your work? I know that they hate one of those two parts in their own life. There is no work-life balance.
1983, we started the International Dermal Institute, which is still the number one training programme in the industry, and we launched Dermalogica in January of 1986

**Steven Bartlett** (0:19)
And that business generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

**Jane Wurwand** (0:22)
We knew that the big opportunity was going to be a product.
Lots of people have great ideas every day. The difference? Most people can't execute because the details are really important and most people miss them or start to think they're petty.
A brand triggers emotional responses. I'm not a diva, but I am strong and I know what makes a business successful. We can't be afraid that some people won't like what we say. We have to say it.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:49)
We both know that we could just spend all of our time just doing business. What's the cost of that?

**Jane Wurwand** (0:52)
I would self-sabotage relationships. We were just working so hard and Lucy came down stairs and she said, Mom, I just... and I said, Lucy, for goodness sake, what is wrong? and she said, I wanted to give you a hug. You look so cross. I was just stood there with my child in front of me, looking scared of me.
That was the tipping point for me. I had to ask for help.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:22)
So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is The Diary Of A CEO, USA edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Jane, as I delve deep into your story, into your book, it became so apparently clear to me that your early years, your childhood were very, very formative. Can you tell me about those early years and how they shaped and molded you into the person you were to become today?

**Jane Wurwand** (1:58)
I think at the time, obviously, I didn't realize exactly how formative my childhood was going to be. I think most of us look back at our childhood for better or worse and realize that's actually where so much of whatever I am as an adult came from.
So I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the youngest of four girls. My mom and dad had been, they met in the Second World War in India. Dad was a little older than my mom. My mom was 38, my dad was 50, when he died of heart attack. Suddenly, not expected, did not know he was ill. My mother at 38 with four children had not worked since she married. And the reason was she was a trained nurse, but at that time in the UK, and it carried on until I think the early 70s, and it did here too, if you were a married woman, you gave up your job to a single woman because it was assumed that you didn't need the work. That was true in nursing and in teaching. So she hadn't worked since 1945
She also didn't know how to drive a car, and she had no financial literacy.
But this woman, my mother, she pulled herself together.
She got work as a nurse. She had a friend who was then working at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. She called her up. She said, Pat, I need a job. She said, What can you give me? And she said, I can give you a night shift, 7 to 7, because I was two. So I wasn't going to school. My mom had to take care of me during the day and then go to work.
And so everything was kind of determined right there. My mother drummed into every one of us, learn how to do something. Because if you don't know how to do something, literally a skill set in your hands that you can turn on a penny and go into work right away. She didn't know what she would have done with that. Her training. And so that became absolutely concrete in my head. I have to be able to support myself. I have to be able to earn my own money. And I can't ever put my future in the hands of someone else's income or success. And so, yes, that was highly formative. It then led me to the life I know I've led and also what things I care about and what I think is important.

**Steven Bartlett** (4:29)
And the loss of your father at two and three quarters years old, what impact in hindsight did that have on you directly?