Philip Berkovitz: Founder of PHILIP B

Episode 585

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we're joined by Philip Berkovitz, the visionary founder of the award-winning PHILIP B® line of hair and body products. Known as one of Hollywood’s foremost hair care specialists, Philip has redefined what it means to have healthy, beautiful hair. His innovative approach combines cutting-edge science with therapeutic botanicals to create products that deliver transformative results.
Philip takes us on a journey through the creation of PHILIP B®, starting with his groundbreaking Rejuvenating Oil treatment and leading up to his luxurious Russian Amber Imperial Collection. We delve into his emphasis on scalp health as the foundation for beautiful hair and explore how he has managed to stay ahead in the highly competitive beauty industry.
Throughout our conversation, Philip shares insights into the challenges of building a brand that stands out, his strategies for innovation while staying true to his core values, and what it takes to maintain the quality and luxury that PHILIP B® is known for. He also offers valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make their mark in any industry.
Join us for an inspiring discussion filled with actionable advice on beauty, entrepreneurship, and the power of innovation. This episode is a must-listen for anyone eager to learn about the intersection of science and nature in beauty care and how to build a thriving business. Be sure to tune in—you won’t want to miss a moment of this enriching conversation! Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. So excited and thrilled to introduce our next guest who has been making waves get it in the beauty industry for decades, Philip Berkovitz, who is the founder of the award winning Philip B line of hair and body products known as one of Hollywood’s foremost hair care specialists, Philip has redefined what it means to have healthy, beautiful hair, and his innovative approach combines cutting edge science with therapeutic botanicals, creating products that deliver transformative results. So from his groundbreaking Rejuvenating oil treatment that he is also known for to the luxurious Russian Amber Imperial collection, Philips dedication to scalp health and natural beauty has set standards in the industry, and I cannot wait to dive into his journey and really get into the science behind the brand. And as you know, I’m such a massive brand person. So when I got to meet Philip, I said to him, before we even got going, I don’t know, I just had this image that it was just it was going to be this 100 year old French man. I don’t know Philip B, but I’m, I’m super excited to

Philip Berkovitz 2:07
I am 100 Yeah, no, just not. I

Kara Goldin 2:10
look really good. Not real. Exactly, exactly. So I

Philip Berkovitz 2:13
just turned 60, though, if that counts for anything, I think you know, if age brings wisdom between my upbringing and and, and the years I’ve put into this industry and, and what I’ve learned, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of wisdom going on here in my head

Kara Goldin 2:27
that’s awesome. Well, happy, happy belated birthday, and congratulations to everything that you’ve done. So can you tell us a little bit about the background, like, what led you to the beauty industry overall and eventually creating your own hair care line.

Philip Berkovitz 2:43
Oh, that’s the craziest story of all you know. How you end up like sometimes people end up doing a profession that they’ve kind of done all their lives, and they don’t really know how they got there. But then I had the moment. I had my aha moment. I made several in my life, and one of them was my mom used to take me to the hair salon from the time I was born till probably six or seven years old, I used to go with her every week for her washing set. And when you’re a little kid in a hair salon, your mom’s getting a washing set, you know, there’s a lot of lot of idle time going on there, and the little kids don’t have that patience. We want to play. We want to do things. So while she’s under the dryer, you know, all the other mothers were like, can you just get him under control? So the salon said, Do you want to sort rollers? So I was probably two or three, and they handed me a tray of rollers of different colors. And that she showed me. The assistant showed me, you put the blue and the yellow and the green and the red and the purple. And I was stacking rollers. And then they had me separating perm papers, taking papers and separating them and putting them in stacks. Then they taught me how to sweep the floor so and then monkey see monkey do, because hard wiring goes into place between, like zero and five and zero and three, you’re a sponge. So I was watching these guys, these flamboyant men, just teasing up here. And I went home, and I took my sister’s Barbie dolls, I couldn’t wait to do it, and I teased the hair, and I cut them, and I did all sorts of things that which made her crazy, and we still laugh about it to this day. That is so funny, but, um, yeah, that’s really what detonated my my whole talent in here and and then it just went trial and error, trial and error, until I got perfect. About the time I was 15, I was rocking,

Kara Goldin 4:24
and so you you just used to do it at home. Did you ever start doing your mom’s hair and doing, you know, setting it? Yeah, that’s awesome,

Philip Berkovitz 4:32
cutting it, setting it. My brother’s here. I’m the youngest of five kids, so I used to do my friends here. My friend’s mother was a hairdresser. She said, You do such great haircuts. Can you cut my hair? I was like shaking, but I gave her a haircut, and she instructed me a little bit here and there, gave me pointers and tips, and she was so great. And I have to tell you, it just built my confidence even more. Like to like tenfold.

Kara Goldin 4:55
That’s awesome. I remember Saturdays going to my mom would get her. Wash and set as well. And that was, like the Saturday thing. And it was in, I think, Dillards department store. She would go to the she would go to the beauty salon. And Ashley, I remember, all they would have on television on Saturday was race car driving. And so I would just sit there and ask all these there were none, you know, no cartoons after like, noon, right? So, and it was all race car driving all the time. And so I just sit there and watch it. Or

Philip Berkovitz 5:30
when we grew up, by 12 noon, you’re out with your friends on your bikes, you were playing, you were outdoors. You weren’t sitting on a Gameboy, no.

Kara Goldin 5:36
But unless I was, you know, waiting with my mom in the hair salon that I was then I chose to do that. So that was the only time. But when the salon was Martha would have put you to work. When did wash and sets just stop? I mean, I feel like the agent that the beauty industry has changed significantly,

Philip Berkovitz 5:55
Vidal, did it. He did it with his symmetrical cuts. That’s when, that’s really when we went. We moved over to really sleek, straight, geometrical shaped shapes, and here we got away from these big bubble these bubble helmet top hairdos.

Kara Goldin 6:11
So the Rejuvenating oil treatment was your first major product line. Can you talk a little bit about the brand that you ultimately created? Sure, yeah, I’d love to hear a lot more about it.

Philip Berkovitz 6:26
Okay, you know when here, when you’re when your industry is your life, and you live it, breathe it, sleep it, and you are it. You look for solutions. And you know you have to realize that when you go to your hairdresser, you develop a bond, a friendship that’s very deep. And you talk about, oftentimes, you talk about problems. And they ask my dermatologist, why do people open up to hairdressers like bartenders? We open up. And she thought, she’s very she’s a friend of mine, and dr ava shaman, she’s amazing, and Hollywood. And she said she laughed, and she said, You know, it’s probably because there’s millions of nerve endings in the scalp, and when you move the hair, it feels so good. It’s almost like drinking a glass. Drinking a glass of wine. And people get all warm and fuzzy and start telling you all their private information. But you also build these great friendships of confidence, and you also become friends with with the families. You do the kids first haircuts. You meet the husband of the boyfriend, who becomes the husband. You again the kids first haircut. So then the kids grow up, you do their haircuts, off to college, and you develop these you become part of all these families. You care about them, and they care about you, but when they sit in your chair, and their problems bigger than cut in color, psoriasis, dandruff, folliculitis, you know, people have issues, and there’s no socioeconomic boundaries when it comes to hair and scalp issues, hair loss, everything, it affects everyone. All these things affect everyone in all walks of life. So people come to you and they want solutions. And I used to go down to the salon front desk and look for the solutions on the shelves. And we prided ourselves on carrying great product. We were the best Hollywood hair salon. We had all the movie stars. David Bowie, everyone used to come in. It was incredible. Julia Roberts. We had all the Charlie’s Angels back then, all three of them, Farah, everybody. It was amazing. Jacqueline, everyone was in. It was incredible. So we had the who’s who, and we also prided ourselves in having the most talented people with the greatest products. But we didn’t have those great products, because even the greatest products were soap, water and fragrance and minimum amounts of essential oils, like essential oils or medicines. So if you think about it, it’s like volume comes from valerian root and tea tree. Tea Tree oils and antimicrobial and antiseptic and antibacterial. But in America, we buy these things over the counter, and everyone thinks, oh, it’s cute. Essential oils, so cute. Guess what? They’re medicines everyone. And they have to be used at certain thresholds, because when you over, when you overdose the skin, your skin’s a large immune organ, and when you overdose it, you upset the immune system. Then the immune system starts going to where you’ve upset it and irritated the skin, versus maybe staving off a common cold or even something as bad, as bad as like cancer. In your system. You need your immune system to keep on working, to keep your system healthy, the last thing you need to do is distract it. And I learned this harmony and healing. So I started looking at issues. When clients came to me with issues like psoriasis, these thick patches of skin on the head, I was like, what is that? And then the clients would tell me, Oh, I itch all night. I itch all day. I itch in my sleep. I’ve been itching almost all my life when it started. You know, usually it’s triggered by a certain point in life. Could be adolescence, could be could be somewhere in college or perimenopause, or somewhere it triggers. It’s the immune system weakening and and I wanted to figure out what how to make solutions. So I needed to figure out what the problems were. So if you know what they are, then you could work towards solutions. And sometimes solutions are maintenance programs. And so

Kara Goldin 9:48
the Rejuvenating oil treatment you before you actually decided. I mean, were you just kind of testing it in your salon? Is that sort of to try and help?

Philip Berkovitz 9:58
I had, I had a lady. Come to me and she wanted me to retouch her roots, and she had bleach blonde hair. She had four inches of regrowth, and it was the regrowth was almost jet black, and she had very oily scalp. It was a really interesting situation. A lot of hairdressers understand this. And when a lot, when a lady comes in says, I haven’t retouched my color in four months and and she has this very dark hair. It’s usually very orange at the root and brassy at the demarcation line. And her she and when I needed to assess how long it had been since, since she had colored it last. So I made the part, and I held the hair down to assess the length, because it’s a half an inch a month. So I needed to know, because when you’re lifting color, it lives quicker at the scalp because of body heat. And the further away from the scalp, it lifts slower. So you have to know when to pull it through. And I looked, and I said, why are your scalp so oily? She goes all my life. And I said, you know, your roots are so shiny, I could see my reflection. And I said, and where your demarcation line is, where the bleach, the bleach, or the color, was put four months earlier. You could see the oil had already crossed that line, and it was so shiny. But as I went down the strand, it became more brittle. And that’s when I realized, oh my god, oh my god, you need to replicate sebum. That’s the solution you need to, like, literally, if. And I said to her, Do you know that if I could take the sebum from your scalp and I could soak your hair in it, I could even out your hair as porosity. I said this to this woman, and she looked at me, and then she says, What does that mean? Yeah, so they could even out the absorbency of your hair. I can mean your ends are so dry and thirsty. If I could call them, they were screaming for moisture. But I called your scalp, and your scalp was like, I got plenty of moisture. And I said, I called your midshaft, and your midshaft was like, I’m getting hungry. So I realized, if I could just take that sebum and pull it down through the ends, and that’s when I started studying molecules, molecular structure of essential and carrier oils, carrier olive, almond, sesame, jojoba, these oils are carrier base oils with no medicinal value, more moisturizing, unlike like calendula, which is an anti inflammatory chamomile, which is using anti inflammatory. So it’s like really looking at all of the essential oils from from a healing perspective. It’s very exciting for me. Did you know physicians desk reference guide, the for the doctors, which is an encyclopedia of medicine, makes a PDR of plant medicines?

Kara Goldin 12:17
I did not know that? Yeah, wow. That’s amazing. You buy it online.

Philip Berkovitz 12:22
It’s amazing, amazing botanical. PDR, put up by physicians desk reference guys. So

Kara Goldin 12:27
what year did the Rejuvenating oil treatment actually come out? Then

Philip Berkovitz 12:32
I launched Rejuvenating oil, believe it or not, in 1988 I launched it, and my clients were blown away. How the hair just came back to life. Sharon’s Sharon Stone’s hair stopped breaking, like everyone’s hair stopped breaking. Everyone’s hair color became luminous, shiny, bright, translucent, highly reflective. And people like it literally changed lives. And it changed the whole appearance of everyone right before your eyes. It was instant, because here’s it, here’s dead. It’s like shoes. You know, you take an old pair of shoes. Shoes, a keratinized protein. That’s what leather is so it’s here, dead byproduct of the body, characterized protein. With shoes. You could take your, your beautiful favorite shoe, news shoes, Chanel, whatever, and you can take them out and look at them and go my favorite shoes. They look so tired. Then you wipe them off, clean off the dirt. Then you take some, some some cream that has lipid moisture in it, fat and with pigment, and you rub it on, and you put it on, and you let it soak in. And then you take a rag or a soft chamois cloth, and you buff it. And you know, when you’re buffing, you’re moving the molecules. And the faster you move the molecules, you create heat, like rubbing your hands together to get hot. And so by doing that, you’re actually taking the oil in the pigment, and you’re you’re burnishing it into the hide, and it’s soaking into the hide, and the hide swelling back up again. It’s becoming translucent and starting to glow. And that’s why shoes, that’s why shoes come back instantly. And the funny thing is a shoe brush. A shoe brush, which is the final step in buffing a shoe. The bristles are the same as a hairbrush. So

Kara Goldin 14:06
interesting. Oh, that’s crazy.

Philip Berkovitz 14:08
Yeah, crazy. I was blow drying hair one day, and I used to, my dad used to make me polish his shoes. I hated doing it, six pairs at a time, eight pairs. And I used to hate doing and I have this brush, and I’d be at the workplace doing this. And I would then one day a blow drying here, and I just went, oh my god, the same as my dad’s shoe brush. This is crazy.

Kara Goldin 14:31
So when you’re using the Rejuvenating oil treatment, and you’re not, so you’re, you’re not rubbing it into the scalp, you’re you’re rubbing it onto the ends, or you’re rubbing it out everywhere. No, no,

Philip Berkovitz 14:43
please, please. Your scalp, the oily is part of the body. Yeah, you have 100 140,000 follicles in average human head. Every follicle has a large sebaceous gland. Now your scalp’s coded in sebum. And when I asked Dr Ava, my girlfriend, I said, How do I explain sebum to my client? Lions, because the scalps coated, and everyone’s like, my hair is so greasy as your scalp is greasy, that grease is really sebum. And you know what sebum is. And dr ava said it best get your hair’s food, honey, take a natural bristle brush, which is a porous bristle, and brush it through, let the bristles pick up the natural oils and carry them down the hair shaft. And instead of washing those precious oils away, use them. That’s, that’s the God given oil treatment. Now with, even with proper brushing, when you have here, that’s what’s 12 inches is one year, and then 24 inches is two years, and 36 inches is three years old the ends. So when your hair is that long, with proper brushing, you can get your oils four to six inches down the hair shaft. But why did, why does hair split? Well, same as lips, when they dry, they crack, they split so but if you feed them with lipids, what here eats, you can actually keep the hair, stop the hair from splitting, keeping it healthy, plump, plumper, because as here loses lipids, it shrinks, right? And so your ends are always or the diameter of your ends is always smaller than at the root. The root is always plumper. So you’re always so

Kara Goldin 16:07
you take the rejuvenate, Rejuvenating oil and put it where it doesn’t

Philip Berkovitz 16:11
dry unwashed here, always apply to dry, unwashed here. Now let me tell you, I A client came in with psoriasis patches on are all around the Nate, thick patches of dead, dead, dry skin that and psoriasis, you can get up to a month’s worth of worth of cell production in a 24 hour period, depending on on on on the on the psoriasis itself, on your immune system. When your immune system strong, it suppresses it. But as your immune system weakens, the cells turn over faster and quicker. And so you can get up to one month’s worth of cell production. So when, usually people with psoriasis, they always have very thick, dry hair. So I said to one of my clients, God, your hair is so dry. I said, Do you mind if I give you an oil treatment? He goes, No, not at all. So I literally, I took the oil and I just poured it on. It was so thirsty. It would have been there all day applying it. I just took a bottle and they just poured it on now I used to hand mix these oils and funnel them into bottles, and clients would come and buy them for me, and $25 I didn’t even know what it cost me. I just know I’d go to the oil store, buy my essential in my carrier oils, mix it. People would say, you’re mixing this right in front of me. This is crazy, yeah. And I have celebrities that will tell you that how I used to mix it in front of them and give it to them, and they’d pour it on their hair. And so I poured it all over his hair, with with psoriasis, and I poured it onto a scalp, because I know that what comes out of your scalp is animal. An animal is a very large molecule, and plants are much smaller molecules. So having the understanding of molecular structure, you if you understand that, if you have very heavy animal molecules on your head. It’s very heavy, but if you want to dilute them down so you solubilize a plant molecule, a plant oil, into it, it will soften that oil and allow it to move off the scalp and down the hair shaft. Now interesting when I put it on this client’s head, who had psoriasis patches. His patches literally started as I massaged his scalp gently, very gently. As I massaged his scalp, these patches literally started to break and slither off the scalp, slide away, interesting, and he fell asleep. And he fell asleep like this, and started snoring while I was rubbing his scalp, rubbing the patches, and I was heating it with a blow dryer, gradually, because oil grabs heat in seconds, so you have to be very gradual. And as I was heating it, the patches were sliding off and slithering off the scalp, and they and literally, I got to a point where they were gone, and all I saw with these pink patches on his head that had never seen daylight. And this client lifted his head and looked at me in the mirror and said, Oh my God, my itching just stopped. And I was on a stool sitting behind him with on wheels, and I rolled around, and I looked at her in the mirror. Go, what does that mean? He goes, Philip, you don’t understand, I itch all night. I itch all day. Itch in my sleep. You made my itching stop. You made my itching stop. And you got so excited, I got excited. And so every time I saw psoriasis patches on client’s head, which hairdressers know this? I was like, let’s give you an oil treatment. Yeah. And clients, I had doctors from UCLA with psoriasis all over their scalp coming to me. It was crazy, that’s and then I realized I’m going into medicine. I’m getting medical. So now I knew I needed to find the next step solution, which was the topical solution. And that’s when a client came to me, and I was doing her hair, very famous, and I was telling her how excited I was, and she said, My daughter has psoriasis. And I said, Oh. I said, can I give her a treatment? So they flew me to Las Vegas, and I went to the hotel, one of the hotels that they owned, and and I gave the daughter a treatment, and I cleared her scalp. And she said, I want to know why you can clear my scalp in the most famous doctor of psoriasis in the world. Can’t do this. And I thought about it, and I said, it’s called I thought about it. I call it the seven minute hour. You wait an hour and you get seven minutes in the doctor’s office, and the doctor writes, takes a look, writes to a prescription. It says, Fill this by and whereas I actually go through this procedure of applying an oil that dissolves. Cells literally breaks up, dismantles oil, dismantles cells. So by doing this, and I learned all this, and this is in my passion, and you could see I get in passionate, yeah, to get rid No, I

Kara Goldin 20:10
love it when you

Philip Berkovitz 20:12
when you live these experiences with people that you care about, it’s so rich and it’s so deep. So I’m oil not only stops breakage of hair and evens out porosity and makes your color take evenly, and makes your color shine and makes your color last longer and hold longer. People are so afraid of oil when you mention oil treatment, is my hair gonna be greasy and oily? And I go, Well, do you think you would be coming to me with the recommendations from your friends if I made their hair greasy and oily? You know, no, it’s gonna even at your porosity. But you have to understand, oil and water do not mix. So I would sell this oil treatment in the beginning, when I started selling it, and clients would come back to me and go, I didn’t know I did something wrong. And I said, What did you do? Well, I got in the shower. I go wrong. It would be, like, I would get in the shower, wrong? No, you do not wet the hair. Oil and water repel. They don’t mix. Oh, that’s right. I didn’t think about that. That’s, that’s the elemental laws of life. We know, oil and vinegar don’t mix either. They sit on top of each other. You shake it, they mix them, they separate. So, um,

Kara Goldin 21:16
I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump in here, because I think it’s everybody’s got to get this product, for sure, because it’s, it’s just, I

Philip Berkovitz 21:24
have another I have another product I

Kara Goldin 21:25
have to share with you. That’s what I was going to say that. So you have a number of products beyond that. First

Philip Berkovitz 21:32
thing is the mother of invention, Kara. And I have to tell you, this is a pH. This is pH litmus paper. We used it in high school, yeah, in science class. Now the pH of hair and scalp is here. It’s at 5.5 it’s between here is actually between four and 5.5 it’s dead. Now, your body’s pH is is seven and so we all drink alkaline water, which is usually between eight, nine and a little bit under 10. Alkaline water, alkaline in why? Because we’re living dead. Byproduct, dead epidermal layers, 5.5 now you know why your hair tangles. Kara, hmm, because water, which is in this bowl right here from my tap water, I’m going to dip my litmus paper in the water just to show you here. Okay, I’m going to show you what happens. Water has a natural pH of seven. Now, depending on where you live, the water can go up to eight or even nine. I have clients who go to Africa for business, and they would come back and their hair would be green from the well and the alkalinity and the minerals of the water. So you see how the water is jumping up to seven, alkaline in, alkaline in that’s healthy, but outside acid pH toner. Why do you buy a toner at the cosmetic counter? SD, Lauder, Chanel, whatever you buy. These toners to tone the skin, to bring the pH down to to tighten the to tighten the um, the pores, and to give the skin a taut lift. So with the hair, as the pH goes up on hair from 5.5 into 789, your cuticle opens and the hair becomes tangled, dry, hard to manage, but when the cuticle is flat and closed at a zero degree angle, it’s smooth and glassy. And when it’s smooth and glassy, the comb glides right through. So I realized, you know, apple cider vinegar, we like to drink it to pH for the pH of our body. We take a shot in the morning. This is a pH toner with apple cider vinegar. Now I want to show you. Remember, the color here of hair and scalp is 5.5 I mean, the pH of hair and scalp is five, 5.5 the water is seven. Here you can see seven. Okay, this is a pH toner. So when you finish your conditioner, you rinse the conditioner off. Your hair tends to re tangle. PH, the condition is always pH, 5.5 the hero put it on. The hair feels yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Then you rinse it. Rinse it. Rinse it. The water’s pH, blows it back up. Watch this. Wow. It drops it right back down. Now, this has a vinegar scent to it. So a lot of clients said, I don’t want to smell like vinegar. So I said, Okay. I said, let me make something else. So I started studying what can drop the pH, fast, citric acid, vitamin C there. So I made it with citric acid. This one’s another one I make. And this one, it’s, it works. It works a little bit slower, but you can see it drops it right back down again. I love it. When you do that, it’s instant detangling. It’s this one smells like oud. It’s amazing. It’s my oud scented one, and it’s gorgeous. And these toners I spared on my face too, because my pH of my skin when I get out of a shower, the pH of the water is so much higher than what my skin needs that it blows my pores and enlarges the pores, makes my skin so it’s 60 years old. We need to stay young forever. Honey features away. So

Kara Goldin 24:53
funny. So there is so much education. I mean, you are you? Years of studying, right, years of studying, but also a passion and an interest that you can hear it in your voice. If you see you on the video, you can see it right and, and I think that there’s, I mean, from founder to founder. I know a ton about water, and I know quite a bit about beverages. And I know enough to hire people into different areas that I’m not as passionate about, that are that I find those people that are right, that can help, help make a great product better, because they’re so passionate about those areas. But at the core, the founder still has to know a lot about, you know, the products. I think that the brands that stay alive and stay, you know, continue to scale and grow as you have, I think that that’s an important aspect. I mean, what would you say to that? I just, I think that, you know, people will say to me, what’s your favorite flavor? And I’m like, I wouldn’t launch a product if I didn’t like it, right? And I think that’s probably the same with you. It might not be one that I use every single day, but I there. There has to be one reason why I think it’s really great. And I would imagine that’s the same with you.

Philip Berkovitz 26:22
As I said, necessity is the mother of invention, and I used to have very long hair. And I’ll just here. I want to just see if we can find them. I used to have long hair, and I used to have, I figured, you have to live with something to understand how to take care of it like an animal. Like, you know, when you live with your animal, your dog, your cat, you understand how to care for it, and you get better at it. You become a master. By the time your cat or dog is one or two or three, you are like in the groove. Well, here is like an animal that lives on your head, yeah. And if you learn how to make friends with that animal, and you learn what it eats and how to take care of it, and how to feed it, and how to nurture it, and how to build it back, because it’s a dead byproduct. You can only build it back so much, you know, you can have a great hair day every day, yeah, and that’s, that’s what I wanted to do. Also understanding business when you start a company, like when I was young, I was 2423 when I went into this I thought I was just going to make this product and sell it in my salon downstairs to my clients, like that was the end of my thinking I was going to stay in behind that chair and do what I love to do and help people you come to me with your with your scalp or your hair issues, I give you the solution by but that didn’t happen. Kara, I kept on getting kicked upstairs. I got phone calls. My client lived next door to the president of Neiman Marcus cosmetics called me on the phone. He called Cold, cold, cold. Called me and said, Mom, your client is my neighbor, and gave me this bag of products. And I go to tell you changed my life. It’s amazing. My secretary can’t believe it either. Do you want to be in all my stores? And I was like, Oh my god. Neiman Marcus, sure. And then Dale Crichton, when she was the president of Nordstrom, she called me too. I had to pull over. I was driving and, and, and it was the early days of car phones, and I had one in my car, and it rang. And of course, it was Dale Crichton from Nordstrom and, I was like, how do you scale something? I’m a guy making enough money to buy my ingredients and make my products by hand and fill my own bottles and print my own labels at the print shop. And how do you scale that? And that’s why, years later, I recruited one of my favorite people, who I know is the CEO of cosmetic companies that would sell for mid range, around $50 million and I asked her, when she they sold her last company, can she please come and help me scale my business? And she agreed. And now we’ve scaled to 50 countries globally, and we’re in the best department stores. And it’s amazing.

Kara Goldin 29:01
That’s That’s incredible. So a couple more questions, what, what has been the most surprising lesson you’ve learned on on your journey? I mean, you’ve been, uh, launching, you know, you’ve had incredible products that have stayed right that. And I’m sure there’s some products

Philip Berkovitz 29:22
my original, my original peppermint and avocado shampoo, my skull. It’s the tingling, the world’s first tingling mint shampoo, and it’s my first. It’s my number one product, 33 years in production, and still number one. So oil treatments also number one. The kids are sorry, that’s okay. So what’s been

Kara Goldin 29:45
the most surprising lesson? Most surprising,

Philip Berkovitz 29:48
I think the big revelation for me is, and I want to tell this to everyone, starting a business. If you’re thinking of taking we all need money to start. If you’re thinking of taking a partner, please make sure. Your partner, one has the experience and the knowledge that will help you grow and scale to will be hands on, enough to contribute as much as you, if not more, and has responsible and respectable ethics towards you and your team. Those, those are very important points for anyone starting a company and growing and scaling a business, it has to be based on respect for one another in the workplace and, and also honesty, respect and and also the knowledge of how to do what you’re what you want to achieve. Yeah, so that. And also, I think, raw materials. It’s very important that you source, source, your raw material. Say, Stay true to your passion and love everything that you’re putting out there. If you love it. People are people all over the world. It doesn’t matter the language, the color, the hair texture, all I could tell you is people are all looking for the same things. They all want to be impassioned. They all want to feel excited. And if you can bottle your excitement or create your excitement and scale it, it’s amazing how it changes your life. Because I’ve made friends all over the world through my brand, people that never met me, that meet me and they’re so excited to meet me. And sometimes they’re royalty, amazing, sometimes the biggest movie stars in Hollywood, amazing, like all of it has just been crazy. How my life has changed so much. Well,

Kara Goldin 31:27
I always tell people, consumer feedback, no matter who they are, is so powerful for founders right, to be able to hear you know what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong as well. I think

Philip Berkovitz 31:40
that’s absolutely, absolutely

Kara Goldin 31:41
so so so key so well. Philip Berkovitz, thank you so much, founder of Philip B everybody will have all the info in the show notes, but so enjoyable to finally meet you and congratulations on everything. I mean, you have just killed it, and

Philip Berkovitz 32:03
there I am with long hair. I love it. So get you have to live with it, and you have to learn how to love it, to make every day a great hair day. And so that was, that was my journey.

Kara Goldin 32:13
I love it. Well, thanks again, Philip,

Philip Berkovitz 32:16
thanks Kara.

Kara Goldin 32:17
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. Bye.

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