IAM2328 – Brand Builder Shares His Proven Principles to Entrepreneurial Startups

In this episode, Eric Malka, co-founder and former CEO of The Art of Shaving.

Eric shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey, including the challenges and successes he faced in building a luxury men's grooming brand.

He Emphasizes the importance of prudence and taking time to build a solid foundation for business.

He discusses the importance of creativity which is more valuable than resources; limitations can drive innovation, the value of learning from failures, and the critical role of health in entrepreneurship.

Website: www.ericmalka.com

LinkedIn: eric-malka

Eric Malka Teaser 00:00

And that's really my goal was what can we learn from my journey that can help you increase your odds of winning at the game of Startups. That was really my marching order with the book.

Every chapter is about a chapter in my story, in my journey, and each chapter really needed to have some real takeaways. What's the wisdom? What are the principles and elements that I can share.

Intro 00:27

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM  CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:54

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM  CEO podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Eric Malka. Eric, excited to have you on the show.

Eric Malka 01:01

Thanks for having me, man.

Gresham Harkless 01:03

Yes, absolutely. I'm super excited to have you on, talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. Of course, before we have that phenomenal conversation, I wanted to read a little bit more about Eric so you can hear why he's such an awesome entrepreneur.

And Eric is an entrepreneur, brand builder, investor, and published author with more than 30 years of experience in luxury consumer goods.

As the co-founder and former CEO of the Art of Shaving, he is a pioneer of the luxury men's grooming industry, leading the company from startup to international expansion.

In 2009, the Art of Shaving was acquired by Procter & Gamble, and Eric was tapped by P&G to continue his role as CEO through the end of 2010.

In 2014, he established strategic brand investments, a private equity fund specializing in helping early stage entrepreneurs develop iconic brands and growing businesses.

And Eric migrated to the United States from Morocco at the age of 17 with a hundred dollars in his pocket.

I was listening to before we jumped into this. And one  of the big things that I really loved about Eric's mantra is that he says, think big and start small.

Cause I think sometimes we forget that the journey of a thousand miles begins with that first step. So I think that's so powerful.

And one  of the things in a recently published book that he has called On the Razor's Edge, the story of the Art of Shaving, he said, Being an entrepreneur is like being on the razor's edge where we face a very fine line between success and failure.

So Eric, you're doing so many phenomenal things excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO  community?

Eric Malka 02:27

100%.

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Gresham Harkless 02:28

Awesome. Well, let's get it started then so to kind of kick everything off I know I touched on a little bit. Here a little bit more on your CEO story, we'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

Eric Malka 02:36

Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, I'm just an ordinary guy who had a pretty extraordinary journey. I, My family migrated from Morocco to Montreal in the 1970s. And after freezing my butt off for about 8 years, I decided to get a Greyhound bus ticket to New York City.

I was 17 years old when I arrived at Port Authority in 1985 with $100 in my pocket as an undocumented immigrant. And really scared and excited at the same time to start a journey.

I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I felt that America was the place for me to explore that dream. 24 years later, my company was acquired by Procter & Gamble, as you said before.

So during that time, it was a pretty incredible ride from being a young adolescent in New York City to selling my company that was then recognized globally to the biggest company in the world from a consumer goods perspective

Gresham Harkess 03:49

Yeah, absolutely. You used the right word extraordinary is exactly that but 1 of the things I heard you say I wanted to kind of drill a little bit more on you said you always wanted to be an entrepreneur was that something that was always kind of ingrained in you? What made you have those feelings?

Eric Malka 04:03

It wasn't ingrained in me. My parents were not entrepreneurs. My father was an accountant. He worked for he was an employee for his whole life.

My mother was a housewife. They came into financial trouble when I was in my teens and I think that really changed the course of my life.

Struggling financially, I didn't feel like school was sustainable for me. I didn't have enough money for bus fare to get to the school, let alone everything else I had to do.

So I quit school And I felt that Canada was really closing in on me. My community was suffocating me, my family. I wanted to go as far away from Montreal as I could.

And being Canadian puts you in direct contact with America. I watched American shows. Every day I watched American TV, American movies.

I spoke English perfectly, being Canadian. And there in lie my aspiration to come to America. So I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I think I said to my mother I was gonna become an entrepreneur in America.

I think I was 13 or 14 when I said that to her and you know dismissed it as another thing that a kid says to his mom at 1 point. But interestingly enough, it materialized.

Gresham Harkless 05:40

Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Malka 05:42

Look at us now and manifesting, right?

Gresham Harkless 05:43

Exactly. That's what I'll say. From the mouth of babes and, you know, we sometimes forget like how powerful those words are.

And that's why I appreciate you so much. And of course, writing your book and of course, being in having these conversations, especially being here today.

Because I think there's an Iceland quote that I always quote where I say, in order to see further, you stand on the shoulders of giants.

And the only way to stand on the shoulders of giants is to hear their stories, hear their journeys, hear the things that they wish that they did, didn't do, and all those things all around because it only helps us as entrepreneurs and business owners to be able to kind of learn from those others.

So I know you touched on it a little bit. Would love to drill down more to hear a little bit more about your book, about your venture, everything that you're doing now to kind of make that impact.

Eric Malka 06:21

A lot of people like my story. It's always been like, tell your story. How did you start the Art of Shaving? It's kind of cute.

And I've always been interested in writing a book, but I didn't want to write a story book, right?

I knew the story was going to be compelling, but I wanted the book to be something that you could have real takeaways from.

And as I started writing the book, I really started looking at statistics and I realized how unlikely it was for me to do what I did. It's not something that is easily achieved.

When I looked at the Labor Bureau statistics that 70% of businesses won't be here in 10 years and that less than 1% of startups are going to achieve 10 million dollars in sales.

I realized that we're really talking about the few that made it all the time on social media. And we're really ignoring the 99% that are struggling to make it.

And that's really my goal was what can we learn from my journey that can help you increase your odds of winning at the game of startups. That was really my marching order with the book.

Every chapter is about a chapter in my story, in my journey, and each chapter really needed to have some real takeaways.

What's the wisdom? What are the principles and elements that I can share with the audience to help them navigate their own?

Because every situation is different, you know, the spaghetti line, right? But the principles and elements, they're the same.

You know, when we talk about thinking big and starting small, that's a principle you can apply to anything in your life, whether it's losing weight or building a business. It doesn't matter.

You know, baby steps start crawling before you walk and then walk before you run and then when you're ready, you can start flying, right?

But if you try to go too fast, this is the biggest mistake I see in entrepreneurs, we're impatient by nature, that's how we're wired.

But impatience is, to me, is a virtue, but it's also a curse, right? If you don't have impatience, you shouldn't be in this game anyways.

But if you don't know how to control your impatience, then you're going to get into some trouble. Right? That's just the bottom line.

So these are the types of principles that I try to bring into the book alongside the story by telling the story, which is entertaining, to really help entrepreneurs, you know, hopefully impact their ability to succeed in their in their journey.

Gresham Harkless 09:08

Yeah, absolutely love that. And I almost wonder if like I was going to ask you for what I call your secret sauce can be for yourself, the everything you build or a combination of both.

But the word that really stuck out with me is you said this word obsession, not just passion obsession.

Do you feel like that is part of your secret sauce? They're not that I want to succeed. I think I might succeed, but I have to succeed. Do you feel like that obsession is part of what sets you apart?

Eric Malka 09:31

And you're percent that's great, right? It's I have no plan B. The enemy of entrepreneurs is comfort and, and having a good, good job.

I was not employable. I had no plan B. I started out as a warehouse clerk in the New York City Garment District, making $150 a week.

That wasn't, you know, that was not what I wanted. I was not employable. I didn't come out of Princeton and get a job at Goldman Sachs, right? That would have been the kiss of death for me.

It would have been a great life of comfort and benefits, but to do what I had to do, I had to have no plan B, no safety net. It's swim or sink and I had to do it.

But obsession is an interesting word for me because if you're not obsessed with certain things, you're never going to get them.

Some of the obsessions that we've had that contributed to our success was our obsession to succeed in life, to get out of our predicament, to get out of poverty and to be financially more secure. That was an obsession of mine.

In my 20s, my wife and I did not socialize. When we started the art of shaving, we stopped seeing all our friends. All we cared about was making it.

Morning, at night, we fed ourselves, drank water and slept so that we can do it again the next day. It was an obsession. I was also obsessed with customers. I was completely obsessed with being customer-centric in my business.

You know, I don't care about the business, I care about the customer. That was my motto. I was obsessed with natural ingredients, so was my wife.

We cared about delivering healthy products to our consumers. So We were obsessed with creating natural products. We were obsessed with quality. We were obsessed with aesthetics.

So all these things, all these obsessions is what caused us to execute our company at a very high level and generate the kind of success we had.

Gresham Harkless 11:48

Yeah.

Eric Malka 11:49

I think that was a big part of our success was that we were forced to go slowly in the beginning and we had the wisdom. This is where prudence is another topic I talk about in the book. Prudence is about the wisdom to make good decisions. The analogy I use is driving a car. When insurance companies look at statistics of car crashes, I mean, the more you increase your speed, the more exponential your risk of an accident happens, right? At 20 miles an hour, your risk of an accident are virtually 0. You go to 100 miles an hour, your risk goes up dramatically. You go to 150 miles an hour, you're almost guaranteed to crash. And the same thing can apply to entrepreneurs. If you're going 100 miles an hour on day 1, your chances of crashing and burning is pretty high.

Gresham Harkless 12:49

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Pausing just to say that, so that you can start to build that foundation so that you can ultimately see that kind of come to fruition.

Whatever your goal might be is such a huge hack and frankly a nugget as well too I imagine.

Eric Malka 13:03

Yeah if something's not going well for you and your company it means you have to slow down and fix something you know what I mean? You got to fix something.

Gresham Harkless 13:13

Sounds like before you started the Art of Shaving, it wasn't it was the power of broke where you had to get more creative because there was limitation in terms of resources.

So because of those resources being limited, I imagine you probably had to think outside of the box. And I think that's such a valuable nugget for people.

Eric Malka 13:28

100%. Yeah. Creativity is much more important than resources. I mean, it's to me, that's, you know, when a marketing team has huge budgets.

I think the creativity and the resourcefulness goes way down. So yeah, I agree with you. And failures teach you things, you know.

They make you more humble. You know, they teach you lessons, what not to do. And when I started the art of shaving frankly, I was kind of mentally emotionally broke as an entrepreneur You know, I was like I'll never make it.

I'm such a failure, you know, I and that maybe raises

14:14 – 14:21
Eric Malka: your consciousness about not making those same mistakes again. Right?

Gresham Harkless 14:22

So I wanted to ask you now, my absolute favorite question, which you might've already touched on this, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Eric, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Eric Malka 14:32

Well, being, I mean, at the core core core, being a CEO is being a great leader. And a great leader is someone that can see the future that doesn't exist yet, also known as a vision, and leading to make that vision a reality in the future.

At the most basic level, I think that's what being a CEO is. You make sure everybody's working towards that goal. You communicate that goal.

You foster relationships. You get resources, all the things a CEO is responsible for. But at the core, it's about seeing a vision of a better future and leading your organization towards that future.

Gresham Harkless 15:15

Well Eric, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get out of you, find out about your book, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

Eric Malka 15:30

Health is not just something that is parallel to being an entrepreneur. I think it's part of your strategy. I think it needs to be really one of your pillars of success.

If you're physically fit, you're going to be able to endure physically the demands of being an entrepreneur.

If you're emotionally fit, you're going to be able to endure and manage the demands, emotional demands of being an entrepreneur, being uncomfortable, being strong emotionally and spiritually as well.

You know, meditating 20 minutes a day has accelerated and multiplied my success in life, in business and in life.

You can just go to ericmalka.com and you can find all the information to reach me to buy the book.

Gresham Harkless 16:21

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Eric. Of course, we'll have the links and information. The show knows as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you and connect.

And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Eric Malka 16:29

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Outro 16:31

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co.

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This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness Jr. Thank you for listening.

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