Carol’s Daughter founder Lisa Price turned her passion into a side hustle and realized the American dream

Lisa Price resides the American dream—but only because she took a huge risk. I interviewed her for the next episode of “Masters of the Game” on TheGrioTV, and it was a pleasure to speak about Carol’s Daughter, a brand she founded because I’ve been using it in my hair for 20 years. I’ve never found a higher leave-in conditioner.

In the late Eighties, Price was living in Brooklyn and working as a television producer, but her real passion was making perfumes and lotions at home. For years, she messed around in the kitchen, creating beautiful things for herself and friends. It was just a hobby until her mother, Carol, encouraged her to sell them. So Price took a few bottles to local mini-markets, quickly selling out the small batches she made and making more. Soon, people were asking for her products and coming to her house to purchase them, growing her side hustle into a very small business. When she was pregnant with her first child, she decided to do exactly that—she quit her job and devoted herself full-time to her business, a hair and body care company called Carol’s Daughter.

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The company grew out of her love of being a home chemist who could make lotions for her friends. But most significantly, Price listened to the advice and complaints of her users, which honed her ability to present people what they wanted. She knew the science of what African-American hair needed, and Carol’s Daughter grew steadily. By the 2000s, she had a store in Brooklyn, investments from Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Jay-Z, and sales exceeding $2 million a 12 months.

Still, the business may very well be a challenge for her—Carol’s Daughter had a lot of employees to pay, so Price often walked a tightrope above the valley floor. There were Fridays when she didn’t know the way she was going to make enough money to maintain the company afloat on Monday. It filed for bankruptcy. But it was all the time a great brand with great products, a loyal fan base, and a passionate owner. In 2014, L’Oréal, the global cosmetics conglomerate, acquired Carol’s Daughter, which elevated the brand and made Price wealthy. Her a long time of labor paid off. She went from making beautiful things in her kitchen to constructing a brand that is a component of the portfolio of considered one of the largest cosmetics corporations in the world. Her side hustles created generational wealth. That’s the American dream. Watch Lisa Price tell the whole story on “Masters of the Game,” airing Friday, July 26 at 8:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. CT on TheGrioTV.