Simon sits down with Jo Lehndorf, a forensic photographer and ex-police officer who accidentally built a skincare brand from her kitchen and sold it to a publicly listed company a decade later.
Jo started making skincare oils at home while raising her kids, a bit bored and a bit creative. She paddled along at $4,000 a month on a janky WordPress site until a predatory agency talked her into $8,000 a month, then vanished, leaving her with a $200,000 loan and a phone call one winter evening telling her she was the last client propping up a house of cards. She turned it around herself, hit 1,200 five-star reviews, and exited three years ago.
We go deep into how the agency disaster actually unfolded and why she blames herself instead of them, what happened to Love Skin after the buyer stripped out the founder and couldn't scale it, and how she taught herself to build AI products for e-commerce brands starting with a Claude account and a Shopify connection.
This one's about what a founder-led brand is really worth, and how much of it walks out the door when the founder does.
Massive thanks to Jo for coming onto the podcast.
