She Escaped Communism, Reinvented Nail Polish, and Sold for a Billion Dollars

Harley Finkelstein (00:00:00):
So this is not our usual one, mostly because you and I have our list, the list of all the big shots we want to interview, right? And the list is stacked, right? I mean, we are getting some of the most incredible Jewish entrepreneurs on the planet. We keep doing these interviews, they're getting better and better. More of you are watching. Thank you so much for that. But this one, my wife pulled us aside and said, the fuck are you guys doing? You guys are missing some of the great, some of the big ones. We're like, who? Okay, if you think we're missing the great, who are they? And she's like, Susie Weiss fisherman. We're like, who is that? And she's like, OPI. And then we started to explore this OPI story, and we're like, whoa, this thing is not just some random nail polish company. This is the company that completely changed the entire industry. This is the entrepreneur who changed literally this whole vertical of product and then sells for a billion bucks.

David Segal (00:00:56):
Yeah, I mean, Susie Weiss, Fishman, and OPI took what men saw as frivolous and turned it into a means of self-expression for women and created fashion around what was otherwise just this commodity and basic thing. This interview is incredible because she talks

Harley Finkelstein (00:01:11):
About how she took an existing business, a dental supply business, and figures out a way that actually something they're making could be used for this other thing over here. And Hollywood is kind of getting interested in this other thing over here, and she connects these dots and all of a sudden, this dental supply company becomes one of the most important cosmetic businesses on the planet.

(00:01:32):
And then she talks about how most companies were thinking about marketing in a very kind of haphazard way. They look at a color, it's going to be red number three. She says, no, we're going to lock ourselves in a room for 10 hours each time, and we're going to figure out a more creative way to merchandise this product. You got red nail polish, you got blue nail polish. And she's like, no. She's like, we're going to call it Cajun shrimp. We're going to call it Cajun shrimp. We're going to call it, I'm not a waitress Lincoln Park after dark. I'm not a

David Segal (00:01:58):
Waitress. What was amazing about Susie Weiss Fishman was just how she's both disciplined and creative at the same time. This is unlike a lot of the other big shots we've interviewed. So well-rounded, such an incredible attitude, and she changed the entire nail

Harley Finkelstein (00:02:13):
Industry. And it's also what I loved about it is the way that she talks about where does she get her creativity from? Also, where does she get her discipline, right? I mean, I've never heard anyone say that they were able to acquire their discipline from this particular place, or that they took the lessons of their parents from the concentration camps and utilized them in ways to build these incredible companies. Then of course, she had this huge success, but she talks about raising kids with grit and humility. She talks about humor. She talks about her father and his work ethic, and she says, no matter what, whether they had no money or they had many, many billions of dollars, they still have Shabbat dinner every Friday night. And how that is a staple in their life. This is such an incredible interview. It's a very special one for David, and I hope you enjoy it Susie Wise. Fishman, here we go. Let's go front.

David Segal (00:03:05):
We here started front bottom team from bottom. Now we here front

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:03:13):
Now, team front. Now we here,

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:22):
You and I share something in common, which is that you were born in 1956 in Hungary.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:03:27):
Yes.

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:27):
My father was born a couple of years earlier in Hungary as well, in a place called Deon.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:03:31):
Oh my God.

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:33):
And do you know where that is?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:03:34):
I know Deon very well, and my mom had an uncle. And we would go on summers for vacation to Dereon Leo Bachi, which is Leo Bachi means like a man, Leo Bachi to visit.

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:48):
Wow.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:03:48):
Oh my God.

Harley Finkelstein (00:03:49):
Yeah. So my father was born there in Dereon, and my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. They went to Hungary after. And in 1956, the year you were born, Hungary got really bad. I mean, obviously you had the Hungarian Revolution, you had communism. And so my father left in 56 to come to Canada. He came to Canada with no money, no education. They didn't speak English to create a better life. And I kind of want to start there. I want to start with Laslow and Magda, you're your parents. We'll talk about OPI. We'll talk about all the success later, but start at the beginning. What was life like for you growing up? What were your parents like? You were in an apartment shared with another family. I believe you guys whispered because he didn't want anyone to hear you. Talk to us about the Shabbat dinner table and just kind of growing up in Hungary before you moved.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:04:39):
So my parents were Holocaust survivors. My mom was in Auschwitz, and my dad was under Russian front in the forced labor camp, and he actually got injured. So most of the time he was in an infirmary called hospital.

(00:04:57):
And my dad had a large family. He was one of five, and nobody survived, which is for me hard to believe. My dad came back alone in the entire world. Nobody, my mom, the Hungarian Jews were last to be taken. My mom went on the train. Her dad, she's not sure which camp he was in, where he died. And my mom had two younger brothers and her mom were taken to Auschwitz and then separated by Eichman left and right. My mom was around 19, so she was strong to work. And then her two younger brothers and mom immediately killed, which is so hard. It's

Harley Finkelstein (00:05:42):
Unbelief right

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:05:43):
Here. And then

Harley Finkelstein (00:05:45):
It's a hundred years ago and it still feels so emotional, right?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:05:48):
Yes. And I'm just going to give you a little story. My mom always wanted to go back to Auschwitz, and we said, no, maybe it's going to be too much for her. And then finally, she wouldn't leave us alone. And we said, okay. So I have one sister, my sister, my niece, and myself. We went with her and my mom runs through the gate that Sarah are by Mark Fry, and she runs as if she knows. I'm like, mom slowed down. And she was already, she had a cane slow down and she's running. And where she went, where she knew exactly where the crematorium was because she never said Kurdish for her mom and her brothers. And that's why she wanted to go. And we didn't realize that that's what she wanted to do.

Harley Finkelstein (00:06:39):
What did it say on the gate? What does that translate

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:06:41):
To? Our bite? Mock fry work makes you free.

David Segal (00:06:46):
Yeah. Was this something, as you were a kid growing up, was this something that was openly talked about at the Shabbat dinner table or was it

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:06:52):
No, my mom did not talk about her experience until my niece went on something called March of the Living. And actually both of my kids did a senior high school nurse. My daughter went to a Jewish high school called New J, which is called Di Toledo now. And my son went to Harvard Westlake, which is not

(00:07:12):
A Jewish school, but he went as well on much of the living. And that was really a life-changing experience for them to be where their grandma was. And then my mom opened up and talked about it with the kids. So both my parents survived. They went back to Hungary and they married after the war. My dad hated communism, as you say. 1956, the Russians came in. I was born, I was six months old, and we lived far from the Austrian border where most people kind of went over to Austria and then came to the us to Canada, Australia, different places where Jews were allowed to go, and we couldn't leave the trains. When the Russians come off, they cut off all communications. That's the number one thing. No trains, no phones, no nothing. And we stayed in that small village, town, whatever. But my father was desperate to leave.

(00:08:18):
So we moved to a larger town called Junior, but two hours from Budapest. And my dad found this. My dad was a butcher and so was my grandfather. And he found this young man who lived in the village where my father grew up, and he always came to eat at my grandparents' home. And now he was in the ministry in a high position. And my dad took the 4:00 AM train to Budapest one morning, and he had an appointment to see him at his house. And he only asked one question, how he gave the number. We had the money, and within two months we were going to Israel because it was before the 67 war, and there was diplomatic relations between Hungary and Israel. We couldn't come to the United States because there are too many Hungarians. And

Harley Finkelstein (00:09:13):
Same with the Canada. Canada already led 40,000 Hungarians. I mean, the migration out of Hungary in those days, and especially in the fifties, was huge in North America.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:09:23):
So there's a quota. So we couldn't come. So we went to Israel, we went through Athens, and then the Nu, which is the Israeli relief organization, gathered us and we were put on a boat to Haifa.

Harley Finkelstein (00:09:36):
And what was that like when you stepped off the boat?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:09:38):
Unbelievable. When you see in the morning, early morning, you arrive on the boat

David Segal (00:09:43):
And you're a little girl, right? How old are you?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:09:45):
I'm 10 years old, and we left Hungary.

David Segal (00:09:48):
And did you want to leave as a child? I mean, this is much bigger than you probably realized at the time, but how do you remember feeling?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:09:58):
I mean, I wanted to leave because we lived all the time in fear. And so many times they always come at night, knock, knock on the door. And so many times they took my dad, and you never know if he's going to come back or end up in the gulag someplace in Russia. And all they wanted is my mom the next day went and paid, and then my dad would come home. So

Harley Finkelstein (00:10:23):
It was just bribes. It was basically they just wanted me,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:10:25):
He wanted my dad to spy on the neighbors, and he refused. And then one day they came, but they didn't take my dad. They took my mom. And then we knew that was a message that we never had before. And then my dad said, we are leaving. And then within a week he went up to Budapest, he arranged everything. And then we sold our home in this town called Y, and we moved out to Budapest. We said, oh, we want the school. And we made a story. We lived in a little one room place because he said, two months, and we leaving.

Harley Finkelstein (00:11:03):
We have to go. Was your father growing up in the house? Obviously he was very enterprising when it came to getting the family out of Hungary and to Israel. Was he an entrepreneur? Did you see that in him?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:11:16):
My dad was an amazing butcher and he had a store where he was the only one working, but this is how it worked. My dad would go in the middle of the night to the store when he got some meat for the mayor, for the police chief for this, and then only the fat was left for the people. When he opened at 6:00 AM

Harley Finkelstein (00:11:40):
There was nothing left

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:11:41):
Fat,

Harley Finkelstein (00:11:41):
Right, because he'd already given the good stuff to the important people. So that almost in itself is very entrepreneurial. He understood the power dynamics, right?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:11:51):
You had to know in communism, there was a saying, there's the big door and then there's the little door. And you always had to find the little door

David Segal (00:12:01):
If

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:12:01):
You wanted to survive and make it.

David Segal (00:12:03):
Thankfully at currency. I mean, if you're a Jewish family, and I don't know, you do the laundry service, you probably, it's not as exciting to the mayor as the rib estate gets.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:12:14):
And we actually had the rabbi come and teach my sister and I how to pray to read in Hebrew. And I remember my mom always closed the shades. And when we were in la, my mom would always, I'm like, mom, this is my home. This is our garden. You don't need to close the shades all the time. And I told her, and she says, I know, I know. And the next day she closed her.

Harley Finkelstein (00:12:40):
Right? Of course. Of course. It was so ingrained in her. She was just so used to it. Tell us about your experience in Israel. What was that like? How was your life

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:12:47):
There? Oh my God. So we arrive in Israel, and of course I always had a nosebleed when I was a little girl. So there is such a thing as the humin. It's when the dry winds come from the desert in Israel. So I go to school, of course, in my pleaded skirt, in my blouse, I guess I was in Hungary, and the teacher introduces me in front of the class and my nose starts to bleed. So I was totally traumatized, but it was amazing, first of all to call the teacher by her first name, which I couldn't took time for me to get used to and the freedom and the friends, and it was the best time. And I really did not want to leave Israel.

Harley Finkelstein (00:13:37):
Why was that? My

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:13:38):
Dad's dream was to come to America.

Harley Finkelstein (00:13:40):
What did America mean?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:13:42):
America means opportunities like no place in the world. I mean, I love this country. There's no place like the United States to be honest. And nothing is always perfect, but this is as good as it gets in my opinion.

David Segal (00:13:56):
But presumably, when you got to Israel, did he set up shop? Did he have a butcher shop?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:14:01):
No, my dad worked for Richard Levy, which was a big company that was like a distributor of meats and did the cans for the army. So we get there and not too far a few months, the war breaks out the 67 war. And actually my dad was gone for two weeks because he was working day and night in this place making food, the cans for the army. So actually I didn't even see my dad. It was crazy. My mom and I, my mommy got a job cleaning the bank, like washing the floor after the bank closed. So I would go to help her, except the bank manager explained to us where the alarm codes are, which we of course, and we long off every night and my mom got fired because he had to run all the time.

Harley Finkelstein (00:14:58):
Got it, got

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:14:59):
It. He was so crazy. Mrs. Weiss, now please, I'm going to show you again.

Harley Finkelstein (00:15:04):
Please remember,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:15:05):
Please remember, not have the police come. And they always called it. So those were experiences. Then my mom was watching some children, and my sister, actually, my mom had cousins here in New York in Forest Hills, and they came and they took my sister because we thought we would get our green card earlier. So we went to the American Embassy and we applied for green cards, and that's how it took three years to get a number. And that's how we got

Harley Finkelstein (00:15:35):
Here. So by the time you were 13 or so, you had come to the us? I

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:15:38):
Was, yes. You were in the US Five and a half. And your

Harley Finkelstein (00:15:39):
Sister had already been here for a period of time.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:15:41):
She was been here for almost two

Harley Finkelstein (00:15:43):
Years. There's a theme that's emerging a little bit here. Kevin, are we good? Yeah. There's a theme that's emerging here that I want to talk about, which is this idea of hard work, your father, whether it's going away for a couple of weeks during the 67 war in Israel, or going to Budapest to figure out how to get you out of Hungary. Just to kind of foreshadow a little bit, when we talk about OPI and your incredible business success, one of the things that we read a lot about in our research was that, I mean, you worked incredibly hard from door to door selling initially to even at the peak of OPI success to you, working 12 hour days. Is that where you got it from? Was it watching your father and his ambition or his work ethic? Is that where you picked it up from?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:16:28):
Yes, my generation, this is how we grew up. It was normal. You work hard and then you hoped you had with some luck and hard work, you had success. That was kind of not even a question that, and when I speak to young kids in business schools or universities or high schools, I always tell them, you need to work hard. I mean, yes, if you are lucky, you invent the next app and you will be a billionaire and congratulations. But if not, you need to work hard.

Harley Finkelstein (00:17:03):
I would say even on the app side of things, you still have to work really, really hard. No kidding. It doesn't seem easy. It's almost perverse, but you sort of think about your father's work ethic and then that terrible place in the concentration camps, what it said, that hard work sets you free. And in many ways it's been ingrained in us and passed down from different generations that Jews work hard. We are not the tallest, that's for sure. We're often not the smartest. There is one sort of trait that we've noticed through these bigshot interviews, which is that the work ethic is always there when it comes to success,

David Segal (00:17:41):
But it's not discussed. I mean, it's not like your father came with this vocal ambition. Did you ever even talk about it or did you just watched it go down? I mean, he did what he had to do to survive, right?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:17:55):
Absolutely. My dad was 55 when he came here, but if you remember throughout history in Europe, Jews were not allowed to own land. That's how we became entrepreneurs. We were the silversmiths, we were the tailor. We were

Harley Finkelstein (00:18:11):
Tradespeople.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:18:11):
Exactly. And that's how we were and whatever your profession was. And we had livestock, I remember in Hungary. I mean, my dad loved, and also my dad loved being a butcher.

Harley Finkelstein (00:18:29):
He enjoyed it.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:18:30):
He enjoyed it. I always told my kids, if you want to raise chickens, raise the best chickens. Make sure they lay eggs. But whatever you do, do it with the passion and conviction and don't give up. I mean, that was not even a question for

Harley Finkelstein (00:18:48):
Us. Well, you had no choice, right? Your family couldn't give up. So here you are, you're 13 years old, you're now in America, obviously later on in 81, you ended up moving to la. But before you moved to Los Angeles with your sister and your brother-in-law, what was in high school? Were you getting the itch to be an entrepreneur? Were you interested in business and finance and accounting? What were you like as a teenager in New York?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:19:12):
First summer I came here, I didn't speak very good English. I spoke some, I was a mother's helper and went with a family into the Catskill. And then she always told me that she could buy candy and the mud and we would go home because that's what I understood. And the mom said, Susie, no, you have to say no, but I said, I thought you said it. But anyway, it was kind of humorous. And then the second summer, I worked in CarVal ice cream knife. You know me that I'm an ice cream maholic. My dream is to enter a contest of how much ice cream I can eat one day.

Harley Finkelstein (00:19:50):
Amazing.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:19:51):
And every night you could get one something. That was

Harley Finkelstein (00:19:55):
When you worked at CarVal?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:19:56):
Yes. That was like an extra thing. So that soft serve ice cream dipped in chocolate. Oh my God.

Harley Finkelstein (00:20:02):
The best.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:20:03):
The best.

Harley Finkelstein (00:20:03):
What did you learn working there?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:20:06):
I learned to work hard, disciplined. I have a little bit of OCDs. I'm always very neat and organized. The one thing I always tell young people that maybe communism instilled in me is organizational or skills, discipline. I'm extremely disciplined, and that actually served me well during my business life being disciplined, very important, which is I tell my children and young people, you need to be disciplined. I put that key always. I never look for my keys because I always put it in the same place.

David Segal (00:20:43):
Well, but what's kind of remarkable about that is normally when is very disciplined. They're not usually enormously creative. You have both. I mean, your story, we're going to get into it shortly, but I mean, you commoditized an entire industry and brought a level of creativity that had never been seen before. So you have these two seemingly contradictory character traits between discipline and creativity. When did you figure that out? It sounds like you got the discipline placed at the ice cream store, but where did you start to realize, Hey, I'm pretty creative too.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:21:19):
I always had this entrepreneurial spirit, which we kind of mentioned, and I realized. So my brother-in-law, George Chafer, bought a dental supply company from his uncle who after the war immigrated to Venezuela, but all his kids were in the United States. So he came to the US and he got very ill. So he wanted to sell his dental supply business. So I lived in New York, and my sister married George, and they were in the SMA business around here on Broadway and Bleecker Street.

Harley Finkelstein (00:21:55):
Of course, all of these stories, somehow, I don't know why they always start in the SMU business always.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:22:02):
And after my sister marriage, she was young. She was 21 and almost 22, and very nice, great family from Hungary. And I would go after school to put the tickets in with the Denison gun,

Harley Finkelstein (00:22:18):
The plastic thing you put in.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:22:20):
And I was so good at it. And then I got, of

Harley Finkelstein (00:22:23):
Course, you're well organized.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:22:25):
And then I worked in the shipping. So we bundled 11, and then the 12th one, you bundle across amazing. And then Fabio, the Fazio, Fazio, sorry, came to pick up. And we sold to learners and Petri and Abraham Strauss and all those stores. And I went to school and I worked, and every Friday, all the leftovers, the overruns, we could sell to the people, the ladies sewing. So I had money.

Harley Finkelstein (00:22:59):
That's where I started. And I mean, from

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:23:01):
A business sense, you work hard, you do this all week, then every weekend,

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:06):
And then it's cash too, right? To the ladies.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:23:08):
I don't want to say that.

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:08):
Yes, but that's okay. It's a long time ago. We've heard these stories where all the overruns, the overstock, the things that kind of fell off the truck, you can go sell it. Cash.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:23:16):
Cash. I mean, in the schmatta business,

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:20):
Cash was king, of

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:23:20):
Course.

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:21):
Totally. So let's talk about this. So then George buys this small dental supply company. He's in Los Angeles. At what point did you decide to move from New York to la?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:23:31):
My parents said, if you go, we will move as well.

Harley Finkelstein (00:23:34):
Okay.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:23:35):
My dad worked at Wal Baum Supermarket for 10 years. He was the only person who got Shabbat off. He never worked on Shabbat. And because his manager, I remember a young man named Dick. He loved my dad because he was such a craftsman, and he worked so hard. So he had Shabbat off all the time. And my parents said, if you go, then we'll move. So I went and the sun shines in la

Harley Finkelstein (00:24:06):
Yeah. Weather's better in LA than New York for sure. That's right. For

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:24:09):
Sure. So there's no question. And

Harley Finkelstein (00:24:13):
This is 1981, I believe you

David Segal (00:24:14):
Moved

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:24:15):
1981. Yeah.

David Segal (00:24:16):
And father, in the research, it was interesting, your father said to you, when you joined up with your brother-in-law, make sure you get great coffee,

Harley Finkelstein (00:24:25):
Right? He actually said, don't fuck up the coffee. Don't fuck up the coffee. Right? So is that because he didn't know what your role was going to be? Did he think you would be serving

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:24:33):
Coffee? Right. I mean, they didn't think that I would be able to run a business. Mean.

David Segal (00:24:41):
Were you going in there with this premeditated thought that I'm going to take on the world, or were you like, I'm getting a job, I'm going to do my best and show up every day.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:24:47):
Exactly. Work hard. I mean, I filled the bottles.

Harley Finkelstein (00:24:51):
And one of the things we, so now you're in LA with your brother-in-law and your sister. It's a dental supply company. And it seemed like you heard this insight that in Hollywood, these nail technicians were using dental acrylic to create fake nails. Okay, that's an interesting idea. But how do you kind of put these pieces together? How did all, did you think about, Hey, maybe we're not actually selling dental supplies, maybe we're actually selling nail supplies.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:25:23):
So there was a product called Kon, and actually we learned it from nail technicians asking for the product. We had no idea

Harley Finkelstein (00:25:30):
They were coming to you and asking

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:25:31):
For it.

Harley Finkelstein (00:25:32):
Interesting.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:25:32):
And really for nails. And then we did some research that acrylic nail extensions were huge. In the 1980s, women wore these long cord of talons and nails, and then they decorated them and all kinds of things. We learned this from nail technicians asking for pot cord canon. And then after a short time, we learned that it's not legal to sell to nail technicians for one reason, only because the bond between the acrylic and the natural nail was so strong that let's say you hit your nail,

Harley Finkelstein (00:26:09):
You get stuck.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:26:10):
No, the entire

Harley Finkelstein (00:26:12):
Thing, the nail would come off

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:26:14):
Your nail as well. So once there are enough complaints to the FDA, they look

David Segal (00:26:20):
At safety, sorry,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:26:21):
A product. And then they banned it. So we said, oh boy, because we thought more and more technicians would want this. And then one day came this young man called Eric Montgomery, a polymer chemist that worked in the movie industry for Westman. I think his name was a famous makeup artist. And nice. And you schmooze, you talk, and he's a polymer chemist. And we said, oh my God. He says, well, we can do it one chain lower in the Metates. Instead of using metal metate, we can use et Ethan, and that should be legal to sell. So right away, we hired Eric. He was actually from back east from New Jersey, and he came off with the liquid, the powder and the adhesive agent. And that was called the rubber band special.

Harley Finkelstein (00:27:15):
And the rubber band special was basically three things put together. Is that right? Rubber? Can you explain that a bit?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:27:19):
So it was the primer, which was the adhesive agent that you laid down first, and then the monomer and the polymer, which is the liquid and powder, which you use a brush and you pick up load boards and you put a form and you form an L extension form your nail. And that's what,

Harley Finkelstein (00:27:38):
And you tied it together with the rubber band?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:27:39):
With the rubber band. Because we didn't have, that's all you have rubber bands in. We have a box of rubber bands in the office.

Harley Finkelstein (00:27:44):
So you put this together so it really, it's hacked together. So you have this thing, this rubber band special, what do you do with it? How do you actually start selling? I mean, want? What was the next step after that?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:27:56):
The next step was seeing all these nail salons popping up on Ventura Boulevard, which is in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Every corner there are nail salons. So I went and dropped it off at the salons and said, this is a new product called OPI, and please try it and I'll be back in two weeks and let me know what you think. And honestly, when I went back, there was only one question asked, where can we buy it? Because the key was to give enough time for the nail technician to form the nail before it hardens from the oxygen in the air. Because if the cure was too quick, she didn't have, and then she can fire until the cows come home to shape that nail nicely that the customer can walk out. But if she has enough time and the powder is very fine, then she can shape it and minimal filing. And as you can know, time is money. And if she can do two customers an hour or one customer every hour as opposed to two hours, I don't need to tell you how much money, more money she can take home.

(00:29:14):
And he was a huge employer of single women.

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:20):
Nail technicians.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:29:21):
Nail technicians. So it's really a great,

David Segal (00:29:26):
So you're on the front lines, right? You're the one interacting with all of these nail salons.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:29:30):
Yes. Because my brother-in-law continued to keep the dental supply business in case this doesn't succeed.

David Segal (00:29:36):
Oh, of course there's a backup plan here. Are you going back? Is he seeing it the same way you are? Are you going back and you're like, listen, they're saying how quickly can

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:46):
Forget the dental supply? Although I have to ask the question. Okay, so now you have subtraction, but the company name is So, I mean O Auditorium Products Inc.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:29:55):
So that was the parent company of Davis Dental Supply,

Harley Finkelstein (00:29:59):
Which

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:30:00):
Was So auditorium OTO in Latin has to do with

Harley Finkelstein (00:30:03):
The Sure.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:30:04):
So we didn't have any marketing, so we took OPI and actually the first trade show that we did in Long Beach, California, which was a huge beauty show. We all wore buttons. Of course, my brother-in-law had to have the biggest button.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:30:19):
Of course.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:30:19):
What's OPI? So everybody in the show is asking What's OPI? What's OPI?

Harley Finkelstein (00:30:25):
Amazing. Okay. So it wasn't like some creative name. It was pretty boring actually. But it was exactly, figure it out.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:30:33):
It was different because everybody was super nail creative. Nail something nail. And we were OPI.

David Segal (00:30:39):
Yeah, take us into the room. At that first trade show you show up, there are many incumbents in the space. It's not like you guys, there's a whole industry

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:30:49):
Round, actually shared a space with West Coast Beauty Supply. Oh my god, I can't believe I remember everything. Now ask me how I got here. I have zero idea five minutes ago, but as you get older, I remember. So this is perfect to do the interview.

David Segal (00:31:02):
Good, yeah. Take us into the trade show.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:31:05):
So we shared a booth because we didn't have enough money to pay for whole booth. And so we shared it with West Coast Beauty Supply and we set up our little products, the rubber band special, and of course also individual products. And we had only certain sizes, and then we kind of expanded to files and Polish remover, a little bit of products that a professional nail technician would need to use in the salon because the key is for her to buy everything OPI, so that her table, OPI products is prominent, not just one.

David Segal (00:31:40):
But what's super nail in these competitors? They're seeing you there. People are presumably gravitating towards your booth. You've invented something that the market wants. Are they nervous? What do they do with threats at this point? They're

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:31:51):
Not really nervous because they think you're a

David Segal (00:31:53):
Joke.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:31:53):
Yeah,

David Segal (00:31:54):
Yeah. Because you're not polished. They have you're dental packaging and you have a rubber band. Exactly. Polish pun.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:32:01):
So nobody's pretty nervous, but we are like cool people. We're nice. We're nice to everybody. I mean, we love competition always, because it only makes you better as long as you are number one. Competition always is very important. You don't want to be a

Harley Finkelstein (00:32:17):
Singer

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:32:18):
In any industry.

Harley Finkelstein (00:32:19):
And your brother-in-law, was he also into this the way you were?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:32:23):
Yes. He's a funny guy. I mean humor. And I'm pretty funny too.

Harley Finkelstein (00:32:29):
Eastern European Jews tend to have this interesting dark humor that we love.

David Segal (00:32:35):
You just said something that most people would think the opposite on competition is good. Tell us more about that. Because most people think, oh, I don't want competitors. In fact, they're guarded, they're nervous about it. Why is competition good?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:32:47):
I think competition, it makes you only better. I mean, you always have to be one step ahead of the competition, and that pushes you, that makes you do research, makes you do better. How am I going to be number one? And in many ways, whether it's product, whether it's how to evacuate a product, for example, or how to market things, how to get to that consumer. And we also had, by the way, an interesting idea is we wanted the consumer to ask for OPI. When she went into a salon, we were the first one to advertise in consumer magazines. My brother-in-law, George went to the bathroom with the publisher of InStyle. When InStyle magazine came out, we were in the first issue and he wrote something on a toilet paper, five year contract. We always believed in long term. I mean he did. And I also, my whole life, when I invest, when in the business, you always think of long-term because it takes some time to,

Harley Finkelstein (00:33:57):
Historically though, when women at that point were going to nail salons, they weren't asking for any brand. They were just saying, do my nails.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:34:04):
Exactly. If the nail technician was good and you got a good service, that you really ask what product you used. Not really. So how this whole thing started is I see all of a sudden Starbucks now I think coffee. I love coffee. Coffee with black, with something

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:34:23):
White.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:34:25):
And you have a cup of coffee, simple, make it at home. Drip, drip, drip. But my daughter, who's now 32, and she wants Starbucks because all her friends want Starbucks. So I said, Starbucks, what is that, mom? You don't understand. It's so great. So I go to Starbucks and I see a line and I hear people asking for coffee. They want one shot, two shot foam, no foam. And this is not even English to me. They're speaking a different language. And I am like, they making coffee personal and they stay here. Wow. So when it was my turn, I quickly went to the end of the line to hear more. And then I went back to the office and I said, George, you're not going to believe it. There's this place called Starbucks and people ask for their coffee to be personal. We need to make nail polish personal to women. It was before a number and a color more of number 36. It was not personal. And then we thought about it, we both went to Starbucks and we listened more. And then we looked at Dell Polish in salons, and we see that it's ugly, ugly bottle cap. Again, it's like no personality. You would call us disruptors. And later on that was kind of a buzzword. But we kind of changed the industry and we wanted, we said, wow, this is so boring. We can make this personal, fun, exciting, sexy.

(00:36:04):
And if I ask, I meet women still and they find out who I am. So I said, oh no, please, it's okay. People can recite 10, 15 names.

Harley Finkelstein (00:36:15):
Well, I'll tell you something interesting. So just to kind of go off script for a second. The reason that Dave and I love entrepreneurs and Jewish entrepreneurs, this whole show is a celebration of it. But it was my wife, Lindsay, who said that you and I have to speak, that we have to interview Susie from OPI. And we began your research, and as we did more research, it became obvious that you a hundred percent need to be on the show. And I said to Lindsay, I was like, what are favorite colors? And she said, two, let's be friends and Cajun shrimp. And I kid you, I said to her, I was like, you say Cajun shrimp? She said, yes. Cajun shrimp is my favorite one for her toes. She says she loves Cajun shrimp for her toes. The fact that you have a product Susie called Cajun shrimp in an industry that historically was red number three. White number five. That to me is back to what Dave said earlier, that is not just innovator disruptive, that is real creativity. And the fact that you kind of pulled that from Starbucks is incredible.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:37:16):
Absolutely. And the reason we have Cajun shrimp is because there's two things at OPI that we love the most to eat. Number one, because we are Jewish, people say, you want to drink? I said, where's the food? And second to travel. So we came up with these geographical locations. We want to take the consumer and the nail technician traveling with us all around the world, eating the best food, seeing the greatest meeting, the cities, the geographic locations, the beach, the ocean, everywhere we went, we wanted her to come with us because sometimes you can travel and when you get your nails on, I always said, it's psychoanalysis. Now. Your nail technician knows everything about you, the boyfriend, the husband,

Harley Finkelstein (00:38:10):
Everything. I don't do my nails, but I've heard that my wife's nail technician knows more about my life than just about anybody else. So I think that's nail technician. The hairdresser and the hairdresser. That's right. There's one called I love this, instead of red number three, you called it. I'm not really a waitress.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:38:25):
No, I'm not really a waitress. And I even wrote a book.

Harley Finkelstein (00:38:28):
I know that's in your book. That's right.

David Segal (00:38:29):
But just so the listeners understand, what's so remarkable about this is English is your third language. And my understanding is you were involved in creating and marketing all of these different creative names and shades and really taking what was so basic and plain and turning it into this means of self-expression. Your first language is Hungarian and Hebrew and then English. So I mean, how did that happen?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:39:00):
So the name, as I mentioned, food and travel. So we would have collections, seasonal collections named after cities or countries or special geographic areas. And we would have a naming meeting where we sat in the large conference room at OPI in North Hollywood. And there was always food that was representative of that country. Cities, because we always have tough food. And we would invite people who were clever with names. So Georgia, myself, and then we would have Susan Fer. I remember she actually worked at the shipping department, somebody from customer service.

Harley Finkelstein (00:39:42):
Oh, you would pull different people from across the company?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:39:45):
We would, and there would always be a guest. So there was the core group. And then they would always, from marketing, from the creative, from as I said, shipping, customer service, et cetera.

Harley Finkelstein (00:39:55):
And then a guest.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:39:56):
And the guest, but only from the company because these were big secret how it's done. And we would sit eight, 10 hours to come up with a dozen names for a collection. So I would create the colors and that would start first look at trend predictors out of Milan and Paris, which predict trends, not just color trends, but societal trends, everything, because really fabrics, textures, patterns, all that mattered. I always started, if I had the first color in the collection, then that was it. I got it. That first color was always, and they were memorable colors. I'm not really a waitress, for example, from the Hollywood collection,

Harley Finkelstein (00:40:39):
Lincoln Park after Dark

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:40:41):
Lincoln Park after dark from Chicago and Cajun shrimp from New Orleans. That's

David Segal (00:40:47):
Right. Yeah.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:40:47):
Or Russian Navy.

David Segal (00:40:50):
Yeah. By the way, I asked Lindsay before the interview, what's the one thing she wanted to know? She paused and she goes, I want to know what Susie's favorite nail of color is.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:41:00):
My favorite nail color equals the most dollar signs.

Harley Finkelstein (00:41:05):
Whatever sells the most is your favorite. I love it. I mean, that is the most big shot line ever.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:41:11):
I love it.

Harley Finkelstein (00:41:11):
Of course

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:41:12):
You do. It's my favorite color.

Harley Finkelstein (00:41:13):
That's your favorite color. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You can just almost imagine all these competitors of yours when it comes to naming schemes. It's probably some dude, some guy saying, oh, call it blue, blue sky, blue four. Exactly. Call it whatever. And then you're sitting there for eight to 10 hours pulling people from across the company, brainstorming these brilliant colors that this is in the eighties. Now we're talking 30, 40 years later. My wife is still able to rattle off 15 colors like that.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:41:49):
But from the France collection, a color code. You don't know jack shit because you don't know Jacques.

Harley Finkelstein (00:41:54):
Ah, I like that. That's good. That's very good.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:41:57):
It's

Harley Finkelstein (00:41:57):
Brilliant. I love that. I

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:41:59):
Don't know Jack shit. And you don't know Jacques. And it was one of that revolutionary color or Lincoln Park after dark. It was in the front page of the New York Times.

Harley Finkelstein (00:42:09):
We read the article. It's amazing

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:42:10):
Because God became mainstream where these dark shades all of a sudden could be worn by anybody before only if you were kind of that God

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:42:19):
Or

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:42:20):
Person. You were black or Lincoln Park after dark, which is that dark, almost eggplant ish black color. And now it was chic to wear for anybody. And year round colors became year round.

David Segal (00:42:37):
Yeah, I mean you took nail color and made it fashion in a way no one else ever had. But what surprised me tremendously was you also had these corporate partnerships like Dell and with car companies. When did you guys realize that nail color could actually influence other purchases? Like the car you buy, your nail polish favorite could come, could Lincoln Park after dark? Yeah.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:43:02):
Hollywood movies. And you always have to think out of the box. I tell young people, think out of the box. If you think you have a crazy idea, explore it before you say, oh no, it's not going to work. And went to the movie industry. Everybody wanted the female audience. I'll bring you James Bond. I'm a huge James Bond fan, by the way. And so Skyfall, I went to London to present to Barbara Broccoli and the team, and I was there with Omega watch Pepsi.

Harley Finkelstein (00:43:43):
Aston Martin probably was there too.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:43:45):
Yeah, Aston Martin, of course. And others. And people always look down on me, oh, the nail polish ladies here now, fuck you. And that champagne dude who didn't want to speak to me, whatever the champagne is. Of course, afterwards he invited me, oh, you got to come to my family's vineyard. I'm like, leave me alone. And then the best part was to me was a revenge, is that they put two raspberries in the champagne at night when we went to the cocktails. And you never do that, I guess

Harley Finkelstein (00:44:16):
For high end champagne, you

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:44:17):
Forget. He almost had a

Harley Finkelstein (00:44:18):
Heart attack. Perfect.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:44:20):
And I was like,

Harley Finkelstein (00:44:21):
Yes. Perfect.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:44:22):
So when I presented to Barbara Broccoli, so I went after lunch. So I was so nervous. I was shaking, I was so nervous. And when I went there, I had passion. I presented the guy from Pepsi, probably worked for Coke the week before. And so I presented, they were

Harley Finkelstein (00:44:43):
Founders. Founders, right? They weren't founders of these things. They were executives. They were

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:44:46):
Hired

Harley Finkelstein (00:44:46):
Guns.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:44:47):
And then she said, oh my God, do we have integration in the movie? And the guy, I begged him for six months, integration. Integration, of course, Barbara integration saw, and I sat at her table for dinner. So you do everything with the passion. I believed in this. I did those colors, we named those, I mean, not myself, all of them, but I was one of them. We did this. And when I went up there, it was like nothing. And I was so good. Sometimes when I'm on, I'm good.

David Segal (00:45:17):
We've done 25 odd interviews now, and it's interesting. I'm listening to you, and it's an incredible story when you say, I believed in this. I don't think people realize when you say, I believed in this. This is how many years in the making.

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:29):
Well, it's interesting. So you moved to Los Angeles, 1981. By 1987, OPI is now the number one nail polished brand in America.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:45:40):
In the professional

Harley Finkelstein (00:45:42):
In that category. Yeah, in that category fashion. But that is, that's actually pretty quick. That's quicker than most of our guests. Six years to go from a young entrepreneur moving from New York to LA to go work with her brother-in-law in a dental supply company, figures out this creative way to present it and this new technology. And then 87, the number one brand for professional salons. That's unbelievable. Susie, are you guys feeling on top of the world?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:46:09):
You have to take care of the people that work for you. The reps we believe in, that's very, very important. This was our American dream, but we made many people's dream come true.

Harley Finkelstein (00:46:24):
Meaning you made the people that worked with you Rich too.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:46:27):
No question. The company culture is very, very important. And people don't realize it. We saw the company, but the new owners didn't realize how important a culture is of what happens to a company. And we, for example, you became an American citizen. You got a $500 bond July 4th, everybody got $250 bonus during Christmas time, depending on your job description or what you did for the company. But everybody always, we took everybody on that ride with us. And also very, very charitable. I mean, AKA and Tikun LA was how I was brought up. My brother-in-law and OPI is a company. I mean, we did many, many things. We gave loans, never charged interest to, we had 700 employees at the end. When we sold the company, people got loans. People needed money and very, very family oriented. We had a cafeteria, for example, and we subsidized. So everybody ate a hot meal at least once because sometimes people couldn't. So it's, for me,

Harley Finkelstein (00:47:44):
That was really important. Very important. It's amazing because, so 87, as I said, number one, nail brand, professional, professional salons by the year 2000, fast forwarding 13 years, here you are now in over a hundred countries. In my mind, Q, like the upbeat music from 87 to the year 2000, was that what it was? Was the nineties for you, the glory days of OPI, where things just started to go your way? Or did it feel like a consistent grind?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:48:13):
Only the first million is the hardest to do.

Harley Finkelstein (00:48:15):
Yeah.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:48:16):
After that, things starts

David Segal (00:48:18):
To move.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:48:19):
Things start to move, start to move.

David Segal (00:48:21):
You guys had a big setback. I mean, you launched lipstick and I think it was a real, it didn't go well.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:48:27):
Lipstick was a huge setback. And I always say, if you make a mistake the biggest as quickly as possible, admit your mistake, do a recall and move on.

David Segal (00:48:37):
Well, take us back to that time. I mean,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:48:40):
We wanted to expand our footprint in salons and beauty supply stores. So we have the collections, you

Harley Finkelstein (00:48:49):
Had distribution in that point. Huge

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:48:51):
Hit and distribution. We have reps and we had manufacturers reps wrapping us all over the country. And then one day we decided that we were growing and we really needed to have our own reps, and we continued to pay our reps for one extra year after we let them go. Nobody did that in the industry.

Harley Finkelstein (00:49:12):
So you got great reps, presumably.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:49:14):
Unbelievable. And then we hired our own sales team. And now I forgot what I was saying. Why did I,

Harley Finkelstein (00:49:22):
Lipstick? Lipstick.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:49:23):
Oh, lipstick, sorry. So we wanted to grow our footprint in the salons and in beauty supply stores. So natural lipsticks in those days, in the nineties, you would match your lipstick to your nail lacer. Today, that's No, but it was at that time. So we come out with lipstick, except we didn't do enough homework. That lipsticks can, what it's called bloom. When you see those sweat marks on the lipsticks part in heat. And we were shipping it in the summer in the UPS truck

Harley Finkelstein (00:49:59):
In Los Angeles

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:50:00):
From Los Angeles. Big mistake. So a mistake happens. Millions of lipsticks are out in the market. Do a quick recall, bring it all back and issue credits and move on. I tell this to young people, if you make a mistake, admit it. When you start to skirt around a problem, it never really be honest, especially in today's world, the world of at that time, social media starting, you need to be honest that it made a mistake and then move on. And we did. We recorded it, and we were forgiven.

David Segal (00:50:41):
And you didn't go back into lipstick. They were like, that's not our game.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:50:44):
It's not for us. It wasn't for us to do what you do best. Sometimes it's better.

David Segal (00:50:52):
I think that's remarkable because most companies, often where it starts to fall apart is they forget what they're all about. They lose the what we stand

Harley Finkelstein (00:51:00):
For. Yeah. They become everything to everyone as opposed to one thing, to a particular type of person that is

David Segal (00:51:06):
Beloved. Yeah. So when do you know, I mean here on the one hand, you guys are so driven and resilient and committed, and you believe in it. You go all in on nail color and polish, but then lipstick, you try it once and you stop. You're like, we're not doing that. How do you know when to give up and when to just keep pushing through?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:51:28):
Well, you learn quickly because the complaints come and they want to return it. And then the distributor says, what's going on at OP? I mean, we were so always, everything was great. And then this was a huge mistake. And we admit it. You admit the mistake and you bring it back and you issue credits and you move on as quickly as possible. And that's what we did, because try to talk around it or skirt around it.

Harley Finkelstein (00:52:00):
Not the right thing, not your style. That's right.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:52:02):
It doesn't work. I mean, it really doesn't. And again, it was an expensive mistake, especially at that time, but you move on and make up. How did those as soon as possible,

Harley Finkelstein (00:52:18):
How did those days feel? Free? I mean, you've built this empire based on courage and color and chutzpah, and you're doing with George

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:52:28):
And sense of humor.

Harley Finkelstein (00:52:29):
And humor too. Certainly. I mean, it's clear across all your stories, but what did that feel like? I mean, before you sold, we'll talk about the sale to ti I think, which happened in the two thousands. But let's talk just a bit. How are you feeling now here? You grew up in an apartment with another family in communist Hungary as a refugee, you then get into Israel and then eventually make it to the us. Your father is working presumably 60 hours a week your entire life. Now you're in Beverly Hills, now you're in la and you are pretty well known, maybe almost famous. You are successful, you have money. How did the success sit with you?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:53:13):
I'm not kind of who I am. I am. I was never, I don't know. To explain it, I went to work every day and I love what I did. So in that sense, I was extremely lucky. I love to go to work. When I drop my kids off at school, I'm like, yes, bye-bye.

Harley Finkelstein (00:53:35):
Yes, bye-bye. It's time for me to go do my thing.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:53:37):
My kids always said, mom, why are we always the last ones to be picked up? I said, be happy. I'm here. I could have left you.

Harley Finkelstein (00:53:45):
Yeah, well, you have another child, which is the business.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:53:47):
Exactly.

Harley Finkelstein (00:53:48):
So you enjoyed it. You enjoyed the craft, the building, the team. How did you enjoy the, did you still feel, was there a sense of scarcity or did you feel abundance at that point?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:53:59):
Always scarcity. I mean, this comes from my background. I think

Harley Finkelstein (00:54:04):
It comes from all of our backgrounds. We all sort of believe we have this multi-generational scarcity mindset that no matter how much we do and build and have, we don't have enough. And we're always kind of worried about, back to the whispering in the apartment in Hungary who's listening, are they going to come and get us? So that never went away for you?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:54:24):
Never. I mean, as I mentioned, my mom always closed the shades. I'm like, mom, please stop closing the shades.

Harley Finkelstein (00:54:31):
We're in la, no one's coming to get us.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:54:32):
Don't close at night. No, we have to. I said, mom, there's no more sun. The sun went down. Do not close the shades. And those things never leave you, sometimes speaking quietly. I'm like, we don't need to whisper. My kids sometimes say, mom, why are you whispering? I'm like, oh, you're

Harley Finkelstein (00:54:53):
Right. Sorry. That's the lizard brain, right from generations of having to whisper.

David Segal (00:54:57):
Although in your case, it did sound like there was a moment where you really felt you had made it where there was a moment of success where you guys got into Walmart.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:55:05):
Oh my God, yes. How did that happen? Well, Walmart wanted, so we come out with the OPI is a professional product, and the Lacer also is professional, meaning the only,

Harley Finkelstein (00:55:19):
So it's all b2. It's all wholesale,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:55:21):
Right. And to beauty distributors, supply stores. But come, Sephora and Sephora is very successful and they want OPI and other such chains. And we said, we need to come up with Nicole by OPI, which is my niece, George's daughter. So for her bat mitzvah, we became Nicole by OPI. And that became quite the bat

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:55:50):
Mitzvah gift.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:55:52):
That kind of became the secondary line that could go into different places because Walmart came calling on us. But we had to do Nicole by OPI only Walmart.

Harley Finkelstein (00:56:04):
And why is that? Because were you worried about jeopardizing the relationship with the professionals?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:56:08):
Correct. Professional product. I mean once Amazon or that was gone, but before Amazon, free Amazon, there were still the professional and then the retail.

Harley Finkelstein (00:56:24):
Do you fly down to Bentonville, Arkansas

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:56:26):
Meet? I went to Arkansas. Oh my God. A

Harley Finkelstein (00:56:29):
Hungarian girl in Arkansas mean, who could have imagined?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:56:31):
I said, I made it in America. My God, go to Walmart. I was so excited.

Harley Finkelstein (00:56:37):
If you can make it in Arkansas, you can make it. So you get that. What was that first purchase order from Walmart? Was that unbelievable?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:56:44):
Unbelievable. Yeah, it was crazy. We went to Walmart. I mean, yeah, I made it in America. And you see it in Bentonville. All these companies have headquarters in Bentonville.

David Segal (00:56:57):
Was your dad around when you got into Walmart?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:56:59):
Yeah, he

David Segal (00:57:00):
Was.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:00):
You see all these company I And then you have to sign in.

Harley Finkelstein (00:57:04):
Yeah, of course I've been there. It's

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:06):
Wild. And then you see the buyer and she was super nice, which I really

Harley Finkelstein (00:57:10):
Well, because she probably knew of OPI from her own nail salons.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:13):
Yes. So she was very, very nice. And I appreciated that.

Harley Finkelstein (00:57:18):
And did you have the same colors or was it different? Different

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:21):
Colors.

Harley Finkelstein (00:57:21):
Different colors. Specifically

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:22):
For Nicole was different colors. And that was when in Target also. And

David Segal (00:57:29):
You didn't want to have the same brand going up market and down market at the same time. And so the customer had no idea that OPI was behind the brand. It's in Walmart?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:38):
No, it's said by opi. I called

David Segal (00:57:39):
By opi. Okay.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:57:40):
Yes. And that was fine. Different colors still a great formula. It's something to be done. We weren't crazy about doing that because we really were committed to the professional, professional industry. And we love that industry. I mean, we love the distributors, the professional distributors, all family oriented businesses all over the country. I mean, it was amazing. I mean super nice people and very generational.

David Segal (00:58:12):
Yeah. It's interesting that you described family businesses as amazing. I come from family businesses too in my past, and they sometimes weren't so amazing. They're very dynamic. There's a lot of creativity that comes out of them, but it can be very difficult to separate Rosh Hashanah dinner

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:27):
From Yeah. And you and George clearly had, now at some point, George and your sister also divorced. Right. So how did all, how's that dynamic? Tell us about the dynamic with George and your sister and all that.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:58:38):
So we were very close, tight-knit family.

Harley Finkelstein (00:58:40):
So you, your husband George and your sister?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:58:43):
Right. So I got married late. I was 35 when I got married. And I'm married 34 years in December. Wow. I have to think about that. It goes so fast. But my sister got married when she was young. It was a different, almost generations six years difference between my sister and I. So it's almost a little bit different generation and very close knit family. George, only child. Super nice to my parents. My parents love him, son. His parents are also Hungarian. And it was great until, sadly it wasn't.

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:28):
But did that change this dynamic when George, your sister are divorced? Did it change?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:59:31):
In the beginning there's all that anger and then when everybody comes down and realizes the importance of business and what we built, and then

Harley Finkelstein (00:59:42):
You went back to working with George after the divorce.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:59:45):
Yes, I worked with George and then we decided to

David Segal (00:59:50):
Sell the business

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (00:59:51):
To sell the business and why we sold the business. There comes a time where you have to make one more. We saw the industry somewhat changing all these small mom and pop generation businesses where big players were coming into the professional industry. So you really have to make a decision of the direction that, the next direction that you want to take. So there is some, the family dynamic is a little bit broken, kind of shuffled. The pieces are not so nice and tightly together,

Harley Finkelstein (01:00:31):
Organized anymore. You like everything organized or it's no longer so organized. It's messy. One of the

David Segal (01:00:35):
Hardest things in a family business is bringing in outside talent. How did that, you guys obviously crossed into that threshold where this was much bigger than you and George and you needed to bring in

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:00:46):
Talent in the beginning. Very difficult. Oh my God. You want to hold onto everything and you think you can do everything. And then when you realize you have a nice talk in Hungarian, because George and I spoke in Hungarian when we didn't want to screaming at each other. But when nicely, we explained to each other in Hungarian that if you want to go from level one to level 2, 3, 4, we really needed to grow up, grow up and need other people because we cannot do this. There's only 24 hours in a day and you can only do so much. And some people do things better than you. And that's a huge lesson when you are a small entrepreneurial business to learn that, wow,

Harley Finkelstein (01:01:32):
Really, I can get help, people can help me. I don't have to do everything myself. One of the things that I read in our research was that you went from filling these nail polish containers by hand to eventually signing a check by hand for a billion dollars to sell OPI to cot. Can you walk us through what that day felt like for you selling, I mean on two levels, one level, selling your baby, one of your babies, but the second, again, poor kid from communist Hungary signing a check for a billion dollars.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:02:09):
Very emotional. I'm about to cry. Yes. It was amazing from where I come from. We lived in the small village. It was the outhouse,

Harley Finkelstein (01:02:21):
And

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:02:21):
I always had dreams of falling in

Harley Finkelstein (01:02:24):
Into the hole.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:02:25):
A terrible dream. A terrible dream.

Harley Finkelstein (01:02:27):
So from the outhouse to a billion dollar check, I mean, it's unbelievable

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:02:32):
And it really shows you work hard. You are honest, you treat your people. That to us was always very, very important. How we treated the people at OPI and from our workers who worked in the factory, in the office to the distributors. I mean, OPI was always a special company. We had these trade shows in Las Vegas. We had parties for them. We had the gifts. I mean, it was just, we were different. I always treated people nicely and I think that always comes back. You are good to people. It really comes back. I mean, that's how I grew up. You give, you get I, Akah was always a huge part of my life, my business at certain times, I could only give $5, then 5,000 and maybe 50,000 and et cetera. So those things are very important that the core values that I was very lucky because even though my parents were Holocaust survivors and really went through a lot, but they were very kind and very loving people. Sometimes with all the horrors that these people went through, sometimes giving God

Harley Finkelstein (01:03:55):
Was difficult. We've seen that where it hardens you, where you don't feel like you can have joy in your life because of what you saw.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:04:01):
But my sister and I, it wasn't the case

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:04):
For us. You grew up in a wonderful home, a supportive home,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:04:06):
And a sense of humor. And a sense of humor that was especially had this dry sense of humor. Of

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:10):
Course. I mean, how could you not given what he went through here? So you signed the check that day from Cody billion dollar show.

David Segal (01:04:16):
Well, hold on. I mean for a lot of entrepreneurs, I mean that moment obviously is amazing and you just described it, but for a lot of entrepreneurs the day after that is actually not amazing. Yeah. So what happens? There's a loss of identity, right? You're no longer in the

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:27):
Company. That's what I mean. You called a baby. What was that

David Segal (01:04:30):
Like?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:04:30):
So yes, you get a lot of money and that's wonderful,

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:35):
But you already had money at this point. I mean, you'd already did. Well,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:04:37):
We had a very nice lifestyle, but we kept all the money in the business all the time. So all of a sudden this was a time to kind of take business out, money out.

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:50):
Was that your first liquidity event? True liquidity event?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:04:52):
Yes.

Harley Finkelstein (01:04:52):
Wow. Because you could have taken out big liquidity events. You could have brought an outside investors, done a secondary. There were mechanisms to do that. You never did that.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:05:01):
Never did that. But now the story is this just were control freaks.

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:03):
Right? You don't want anyone to have a vote. You don't want a board of directors. I assume the board up until the acquisition was you and

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:05:09):
George. Bingo.

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:10):
That's

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:05:10):
It. That's it. Wow.

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:12):
Wow. One of the greatest companies in your industry on the planet and two people. Two people.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:05:18):
And how that was happen. We screamed at each other in Hungarian and then whoever screamed louder that

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:23):
And Hungarian, I grew up hearing screams of the Hungarian yelling. It's like, it's rough. I remember the swear words are horrible. The Hungarian dialect and voice inflection's, not

David Segal (01:05:41):
A romantic language.

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:42):
It's not a romantic language. It is eastern European. Right. It's tough. So the

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:05:48):
Day

Harley Finkelstein (01:05:48):
After, I want to hear about the day after.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:05:50):
So the day after is very hard. I go to the office very early and actually the chairman of the board of Cody comes in and it's like seven o'clock and I'm by myself in the office and this man picks in and he said, hello, hello? And then he says, well, can I come in? I said, well, if you tell me who you are, maybe you can come. And that was the chairman of the board.

David Segal (01:06:22):
He just gave you a billion dollars. I'm the man who just gave you a billion dollars. Come on in,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:06:27):
Come on in. He is right. Anyway, he was super nice and it was very, very difficult. But things pretty much stayed as is. They wanted us to stay and to continue the business.

Harley Finkelstein (01:06:43):
Did you have an earnout?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:06:44):
I'm sorry?

Harley Finkelstein (01:06:45):
Did you have an earnout? I mean, did you contract to stay? You and George, you had to stay as part of the deal.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:06:51):
So we contracted for one

Harley Finkelstein (01:06:54):
Year

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:06:54):
Only. They wanted five. I mean not with George because he didn't know how he was going to No, I didn't

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:07:00):
Either.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:07:01):
First I said, I'm leaving Friday. I said to Renado, I don't want to stay. I'm leaving. And then Monday,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:07:10):
I

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:07:10):
Mean this was before the final sale. I said, I changed my mind.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:07:14):
I'm sick.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:07:15):
Yeah. I thought about it on the weekend and it's like, what am I going to do? And I have a family at this time and everything, but this was my life. It was my identity. So anyway, we're there and he comes in and very nice people. I mean they were super nice and they let us run the company. No interference. Then comes the accounting department. They're the first ones to kind of take things over.

Harley Finkelstein (01:07:54):
Yeah, they want to know what are these lunches we're doing? What are these parties we're throwing? Why

David Segal (01:07:58):
Do we need 30 colors? Can we not do it with 10?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:08:01):
Yeah.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:08:03):
For me, I was better able to handle than George. He stayed one more year and then he left. I stayed because I kind of knew I had to up for that and was only doing some of the creative parts. And then slowly, less and less, I mean, I'm still involved with the company kind of year to year doing some PR and things like that.

David Segal (01:08:32):
Was there a moment you realized the business isn't yours anymore?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:08:35):
Yes. When that guy came in, the chairman and he introduced himself and I'm like, oh shit, okay Susie, you need to calm down and be really nice. Be really nice. And this is what we, I mean, it was the right decision in my mind, in my heart, never, still, now, when I go to the offices of OPI in Calabasas now, it's still, I love it. But people are super nice and

Harley Finkelstein (01:09:16):
They've continued to build the brand. I mean OPI is still quintessential. It is still. Most people, most of the time, if they get the choice to choose a product in a professional setting, they choose opi i opi. They choose O Auditorium products Incorporated. It's amazing. You never changed the name to something more like I know some of the other companies that Cody has purchased, it's Kylie Cosmetics. It's very, very different now. But there is this quintessential this to the product. When you look back, obviously you wrote the book, I'm Not really a waitress, and you wanted to tell your story. When you look back on what you've built here, obviously you probably couldn't expect it to grow the way it did, but are you surprised that you became sort of the godmother of the modern professional nail polish industry that you are, Susie, you are a thing. It's remarkable. Are you surprised?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:21):
Surprised. And I never really, when a collection was successful, okay, I was already onto the next collection and how do I make it better?

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:32):
Meaning you never enjoyed that moment of okay, we're doing well. It was always the next thing.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:37):
It was always the next thing. And in my mind, that's just kind of how I am. George was much more enjoyed

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:45):
And

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:45):
I was

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:46):
You didn't go to the award ceremonies?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:48):
No,

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:48):
George went,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:49):
Yeah,

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:49):
Yeah. What's next for you, Susie?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:52):
For me next, I mean, I'm a grandmother. That's amazing.

Harley Finkelstein (01:10:56):
What do they call you? Ni.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:10:59):
Oh, very good. Nanny.

Harley Finkelstein (01:11:01):
Nanny. That's very nice. My father is puppy papa mama. And I don't know a lot of Hungarian, but I grew up hearing the Hungarian language in the house and my grandfather sold eggs at a farmer's market his whole life after they left DE's end. And in a similar vein, there was this work ethic. He never really talked about it. He never said, I'm working really hard. It was just sort of the way you did it. And it was based on his life up until that point. It was based on the survival that he had. It was based on taking care of the family. It's this remarkable resilience.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:11:37):
And George Shafer also, he came in 1956 because they lived, he and his parents and only child who was my sister's husband. So Dave went over to Austria, extremely hard workers. I mean we had this huge work ethic and I just never, now I'm enjoying life. My husband is a physician, but he also, he now teaches at the VA through UCLA. And it's an interesting, just to digress a little bit interesting story. His brother-in-law was killed in Vietnam. He was an orthodox rabbi and his plane was shut out of the sky on a Friday. So my husband always worked at the VA seeing patients', a nephrologist, the kidney specialist, and he's from Guatemala. After the war from Czechoslovakia, they ended up in Guatemala because they couldn't come to the US So that's where he grew up and then came to America. And it's crazy what the life that I live from, where I come from sometimes now that I have time to look

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:12:57):
Back

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:12:58):
And

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:13:00):
It's beautiful.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:13:01):
All the fear when I was growing up and close the shades, don't say anything. I remember when in fourth grade when they asked me, is it true that you're Jewish? And I'm like, oh God, I'm going to be beaten up like crazy. And I shook my head so hard that I thought my head was going to fall off my neck.

David Segal (01:13:19):
You don't want anyone to know saying, no, no, no, I'm not Jewish.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:13:21):
If

David Segal (01:13:22):
It sounds like you're in a period of self-reflection, but you don't strike me as the retirement type.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:13:28):
So now, I mean I'm really enjoying being a grandma.

Harley Finkelstein (01:13:32):
Everyone keeps saying that maybe we should skip the whole parent thing. All the grandparents we interview say parents are good, but being a grandparent,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:13:38):
Because I really, we never really had the time. You

Harley Finkelstein (01:13:41):
Couldn't enjoy it.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:13:42):
Get in the car, let's go. My daughter played tennis. I'm like, Andrea, no, let's get this game over quickly. Beat the shit out of that girl. And I need to go back to the office. So I really don't have time for a three hour game. So try to do this in two hours because I have a meeting.

David Segal (01:13:57):
So is being a grandparent somewhat corrective for having

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:14:01):
To work? Yes. I'm so nice. You're

Harley Finkelstein (01:14:03):
Not

David Segal (01:14:03):
Tough anymore.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:14:04):
I go to school to pick up my grandchildren. I'm there 30 minutes before sitting in the car. Should I not be the first grandma

Harley Finkelstein (01:14:11):
I love? And when your kids were growing up, they were the last to be picked up because you were busy building your

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:14:16):
Company. And I told them say thank you for picking them up and not leaving them there.

Harley Finkelstein (01:14:20):
I want to wrap up with this, which is that Dave and I talk a lot about this because we both have children. Dave has three kids, my wife and I have two daughters. Our children are growing up in a very different situation than we grew up. Your children grew up in a very different situation than you grew up. Very, very different. Your grandchildren, even more so. There is a sense that the further we come from those survivors in particular Holocaust survivors, the further away we go generationally and vintage wise, that we may lose some of that grittiness. Now, the Holocaust was not the first time in the history of the Jewish people that there was an attempt for us to be annihilated. So there's been, this has happened every couple of generations, but how do you raise children and grandchildren to have the grit that you had, Susie, without having to experience what you did

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:15:14):
As a child? You are absolutely 1000% correct that it's actually very scary. But my children still grew up. Mommy was alive and we were very close. My mom stayed and told the story. And Jewish, my daughter went to a Jewish high school. My son, he played baseball, so he went to another school. But we told the story. Shabbat dinners, I know sometimes life is busy. We have Shabbat dinner we had, and now with my grandchildren, sometimes my son would go to a football game or something in the school after. But we had Shabbat dinner every single Friday. Never miss a. I think certain things are not, you can't just let go and say, okay, we'll do it next week or we'll do it next month. Certain things we have to do with our children and grandchildren. I mean, my grandchildren come, they go to a Jewish day school. I think with the times that we have, it's super important if it's possible to send them to a Jewish day school. And I see already my grandson who's in kindergarten learning Hebrew, and we went to this Friday, I went to his school, they get from a older sixth grader. They give a little Torah

(01:16:41):
To the kindergartners,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:16:43):
Not Torah.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:16:44):
And it's so, so important. If you can send them to a Jewish day school, then send them to Sunday school or something. I really believe in the world we live today that it's very, very important. And also if you can, to keep things at home. My husband goes to Shu every day because now he has the time. He closed his practice. He only teaches,

Harley Finkelstein (01:17:09):
He goes to Minan

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:17:10):
Every day, every morning, and sometimes if he can in the evening. He went to Yeshiva of Central Queens

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:17:16):
Here.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:17:17):
So he was sent from Guatemala, very traditional family of course. And then he went to Rambam High School in Los Angeles. And then he went to college and he ended up at Hopkins for his undergraduate in medical school. And then Vanderbilt, UCLA. So he's been around. But it's very, very important to give a Jewish education if at all possible or something. But also to keep things at home. I mean,

Harley Finkelstein (01:17:47):
The show about dinner thing I think is so important. I also wonder how the Jewish side is one thing, but also just on the entrepreneurship side. Do you tell your grandchildren the stories of those early days of OPI?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:18:00):
Not a little young yet, so they're six and four, but certainly my children heard it all the time.

Harley Finkelstein (01:18:08):
And they saw it too.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:18:09):
They were part of it. So many times when they were little, I said, mommy, please don't leave. Mommy, please don't leave. And I closed the door and I went, you

Harley Finkelstein (01:18:17):
Get on the plane.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:18:18):
But they have an amazing life. And my grandchildren and I, myself and my husband, I mean, I live my life with gratitude and I'm super lucky first to my parents. Sadly my parents have passed away, but the gratitude that I owe my dad was 55 when he came to America for a better life.

Harley Finkelstein (01:18:45):
To start over.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:18:46):
To start over.

Harley Finkelstein (01:18:47):
Did he see your success? Was he able to see it?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:18:51):
Little bit.

Harley Finkelstein (01:18:52):
Okay. He's never gotten to Walmart.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:18:54):
Yes. My dad worked at Wall Bound Supermarkets for 10 years from when we came to until he retired. And at the trade show from Long Beach, the trade show, we would bring the cash home. And my dad was the one who counted the money and sorted the dollars, the $5. That was, he loved

Harley Finkelstein (01:19:16):
It to do that. Of course. Well, I mean his daughter is out there making money and it's so crazy that you think about communism created these incredible capitalists. Yes. Somehow this thing, this way of living, which frankly was very difficult. Did not talk about ambition or entrepreneurship. Created some of the greatest entrepreneurs in planet.

David Segal (01:19:41):
Well, you needed strength, right? And strength creates success.

Harley Finkelstein (01:19:44):
Yeah.

David Segal (01:19:45):
So unfortunately though success without being deliberate about it can create weakness actually afterwards. And

Harley Finkelstein (01:19:50):
What did they say? Hard times. Create strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times. Great. Weak people. Exactly.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:19:57):
I mean, you know the Yiddish word, ge?

Harley Finkelstein (01:20:00):
No. What is it?

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:20:00):
Which means doing business,

Harley Finkelstein (01:20:03):
G.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:20:03):
Yeah,

Harley Finkelstein (01:20:04):
I love that.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:20:04):
We always did.

Harley Finkelstein (01:20:06):
He was always the G.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:20:06):
There was always that side.

Harley Finkelstein (01:20:08):
Yeah. There was always a little bit of a hustle. A little, little.

David Segal (01:20:12):
Exactly. I'm reminded of what Harley often says at the end of these interviews, which is we stand as entrepreneurs as young Jewish entrepreneurs on the shoulders of giants. And you are one of those giants. I mean, you don't even realize it, but without even knowing it, you've been an inspiration to us. You've been an inspiration to a lot of people listening to this podcast and it's absolutely remarkable what you've done. And this was a fantastic interview. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you so, so much.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:20:39):
Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate to be able to tell other young people. I always say if I inspired one person today, I've done good,

David Segal (01:20:51):
Inspired many today,

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:20:52):
And I'm going to finish when I speak to young people and the guy say, oh God, the nail polish ladies here. Now we can take a nap. And I say, no, do not fall asleep. Because at the end of my lecture, there is a nail polish. And when you go, if you have a girlfriend or a wife, the headache is gone tonight. So pay

David Segal (01:21:12):
Attention. It's good. You're bribing them with sex. It's very good. Very, very smart. That'll be the opening of the episode. Be like, ladies and gentlemen, the nail polish lady, do not fall asleep.

Harley Finkelstein (01:21:20):
If you want to get late tonight, don't fall asleep on this one. Really? Look, we've got a chance to read some incredible entrepreneurs on the planet, and you were at the top of that list, Susan. What you have built is not only, I said earlier, I'm going to repeat it cause I wrote it down, but I said, you made a bottle of Polish into a billion dollar business with courage, K and chutzpah. And you added one more, which was with humor. And it is so clear that all these people lament and complain about their circumstances. They don't have enough opportunity. They don't know the right people, they don't have the right connections. You grew up in a war torn place during communism with Holocaust, surviving grandparents. This your parents, you've never allowed yourself to. You've had no advantages. And yet here you are building this empire, changing the industry, and then selling for a billion dollars. It is an honor for us to sit with you.

Suzi Wess-Fischmann (01:22:15):
Thank you. No, thank you. It was an honor for me to be here. I really, really enjoyed it. And like we said, sense of humor is a key to getting through life.

David Segal (01:22:25):
I totally agree. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Thank you.