Dr. Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell bought a farm with their savings as a place to relax on weekends after working their jobs in New York City. When the Great Recession hit, they were forced to move there full time and figure out how to make its goat herd profitable.
Beauty Brand Beekman 1802 Built on "Greatest Wisdom of All Time"
Dr. Brent Ridge was the senior vice president for Healthy Living at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia after a successful career as a geriatric medicine specialist at New York City's Mount Sinai. His partner, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, had an award-winning career as an advertising executive.
When they spent their entire savings on a historic farm in tiny Sharon Springs—Beekman 1802, located in one of the poorest counties in New York—it was simply for relaxation and fun. A few months later, a neighbor who was losing his farm asked if his 85 goats could graze on their property. They gave him a cottage to live in and agreed to take goat’s milk in lieu of rent.
A year later, the 2008 Great Recession resulted in them losing their well-paying jobs and wondering how they could pay the million-dollar mortgage on the farm. They knew little about farming and had never been entrepreneurs, but a Neighbor (they capitalize the word because a customer or helper could live anywhere) showed them how to create bars of soap using the milk.
They learned how to code an ecommerce site, take high-quality photos, and process online payments for their soap, then used these skills to help other struggling farmers and artisans. "All our products have two ingredients—goat's milk and Kindness," they wrote, referring to their core value, which they also capitalize.
Today, Beekman 1802 is a global beauty company with more than $100 million in annual sales. In 2019, it set a record as the largest beauty brand launch in the history of HSN and QVC. The duo also had their own reality TV series, “The Fabulous Beekman Boys” (the first gay couple to have their own program on a national network, 2010–11), and they won the 21st season of “The Amazing Race” in 2012.
All this experience has culminated in one of the most entertaining and useful business books you could ever read, “G.O.A.T. WISDOM: How to Build a Truly Great Business From the Founders of Beekman 1802.”
G.O.A.T. isn’t just wordplay on their products—it refers to the “Greatest of All Time” wisdom found in proverbs and time-honored principles.
"We hope our book will inspire everyone who dreams about starting their own business or growing one will look at their own heritage and gut feelings they already have and apply them to their business practices," the authors told Startup Savant.
Principle 1: Chop Your Own Wood and It Will Warm You Twice (How to Delegate)
The new goat milk entrepreneurs didn’t want to take on investors who would begin to control their decisions, but they knew they needed to go beyond online marketing.
In 2009, Ridge began dropping by New York City department stores to show samples of their soap. Everyone turned him down except Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue, which allowed him to set up a small table for November and December. This required him to leave the farm at 4 a.m. and return late at night.
One visitor to the display was a buyer from Anthropologie, the specialty retail chain, who happened to be a fan of their TV show. She ordered 52,000 bars for the next season but needed them delivered in just a few months.
Until then, Beekman had been getting its handmade soap from a local producer, but this order was clearly far beyond her capacity, and they had no money to hire a workforce.
"The idea of being warmed twice by chopping wood was first stated by Henry David Thoreau," they note. "We had to chop wood to even keep the house at a balmy 45 degrees in winter. Too many startups think they need to raise money to pay woodchoppers. We needed to learn how to sharpen our axe, do things ourselves and become more efficient with the help of Google, then delegate tasks to Neighbors and then employees."
When they appeared on the shopping channels, they ignored most of the traditional presentation methods. They did everything “wrong”: dressing in plaid shirts and muck boots, skipping makeup, and even bringing real goats. The audience knew they chopped their own wood—and that authenticity resulted in tremendous sales.
"The warms-you-twice part is that before you delegate a task you need to learn it so that you can see how well others do something without micromanaging, but giving you the general knowledge to see ways to improve each process," they said.
Each chapter includes “Chew On This” and “Become a G.O.A.T.” endnotes that discuss ways to apply each principle to the reader’s own business. Each is illustrated with stories about their experiences and supported by studies of which companies do well.
Principle 2: When the Well is Dry, We Know the Worth of Water (How to Budget, Allocate, and Be Scrappy)
The founders started their Kindness Shop in Sharon Springs to build on their steadily growing online traffic, but it was an hour from the nearest major population center. How could they attract more buyers?
While chatting with someone at the Lenox Hotel in Boston, which carried their products, they learned that her husband managed a company that decorated offices and buildings for Christmas. The decorations were stored and reused the next season, and the old ones were about to be thrown out in 2014.
The Beekman Boys offered to haul as many as they could to decorate their store and farm and invited other businesses in town to do the same. "Sharon Springs looked like the perfect country village from a classic holiday movie and people drove to see it from all over the region," they wrote.
"We are still as frugal and scrappy. We tell our employees who want more money to do something to think about what they would do if there were no budget, which results in creative experiments."
After eight years in business working 100 hours a week, they really needed a vacation but didn’t have the money to do what they would have liked. However, Cuba had recently opened up, and they created an itinerary for themselves and anyone who wanted to be immersed in its culture—the first of what became their Trips of a Lifetime.
Principle 3: A Bad Workman Blames His Tools (How to Learn and Grow)
In 2020, they launched a new line of skincare products that incorporated an ingredient derived from probiotics, organisms that have a positive effect on gut health. Many in the beauty category were including them in their products.
What they soon learned was that the Food and Drug Administration mandated that only food products with live cultures could be labeled “probiotic.” A law firm filed a suit against them and other beauty companies, even though the regulation only applied to food. Some decided to fight it, and some consequently went bankrupt.
Beekman 1802 could have blamed their lawyers but took responsibility and absorbed the loss of producing new packaging.
"Blaming your tools means you aren't learning from your mistakes," they said.
Principle 4: Make Hay While The Sun Shines (How to Seize Opportunities)
On December 24, 2013, at 12:01 a.m., Beekman had more than 2,000 packages that needed to be assembled and shipped. It seemed an impossible task, but they decided to livestream their big push, which resulted in Neighbors showing up to help.
"The ‘Last Day of Shipping 24 Hour Live Marathon' became an annual tradition, and by far the biggest revenue driver of the entire holiday season, even better than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. By the fifth year, tens of thousands of people tuned in to watch the ever-increasing entertainment antics.
Eventually we started attracting celebrity call-ins. Our transparency also helped avert many future irate service calls."
Principle 5: An Empty Vessel Makes the Most Noise (How to Stay Focused)
Plato’s edict is applied to investment “unicorns” that attract a lot of attention as their value skyrockets but eventually fall back to earth. Special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) were hot a few years ago, and now no one will touch them.
"So many companies focus on simply making the initial sale, but not on the lifetime value of the customer," the authors wrote. "Building loyalty is not high on their list. We want them to go deeper and deeper into our brand. It takes time to fill a bucket with water and we concentrated on building our company slowly, creating a ‘love brand' and filling our bucket to the top slowly and quietly. And it doesn't mean it will remain full. You can make a loud entrance, but don't be fooled that it will always be easy after that point."
Principle 6: Don't Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Egg (How to Find Your Purpose)
The “goose” in any business represents the ultimate source of its ability to create value—a core insight, mission, or purpose that gave rise to the business in the first place.
"Many leaders of small and midsized businesses still don't know what their magical goose really is and how to protect and nourish it," they wrote. "For much of our history we didn't either."
They hired a branding agency in 2019 to get an objective understanding of their reason for being. After a day of brainstorming, the head of the agency said, "You aren't selling beauty products, you're selling Kindness."
Kindness to skin became central to product development, as did hiring people who were kind to everyone they dealt with—employees, suppliers, Neighbors, regulators, bankers, and so on.
They point to some of the most purpose-driven long-term success stories, such as Patagonia, Burt’s Bees, Crocs, and Lululemon.
Principle 7: You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but You Can't Make It Drink (How to Exert Influence)
"The horse is anyone you seek to influence: an employee, a potential investor, a Neighbor," they explained. "The water is the solution or idea you want them to embrace. We've been fortunate to learn from the best in the TV retail industry and for all the hundreds of tips and tricks we've learned over the years, one piece of advice from a longtime shopping veteran sticks out above all others."
He said there are only three reasons people buy: they need the product or service, they want it, or they don't want someone else to get it. Rational reasons get you 20% of the way to the transaction, he asserted. Emotional reasons usually get you the rest of the way. But fear of missing out (FOMO) will help seal the deal.
"Reason just serves to help people rationalize choices they've already made in their hearts and we've always been very good at appealing to emotions," they wrote.
They try to create content that is inherently valuable and interesting for their Neighbors, as well as aligning the brand with issues that are important to them.
Principle 8: The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side (How to Use Competitive Intelligence)
The expression is credited to the ancient Greek poet Ovid, and the Beekman Boys noticed that their goats were always looking over the fence at the grass on the other side and could spend all day trying to figure out how to get to it, even though it was identical to what was on their side.
"One of the most important and basic business lessons any of us can learn is to take a balanced approach to competitive analysis, focusing as much on your fundamentals as on what other market players are doing. You need to put even more attention on what your customers find unique, original, and authentic about your company."
By 2018, Beekman 1802 had become a multi-category lifestyle brand, selling home decor, food, and artisanal items, which were not selling nearly as much as their beauty products and becoming a distraction to its growth. They decided to refocus on beauty.
With a marketing team of 15, they thought they knew everything about their competitors in beauty, but the refocus revealed that they had not fully understood aspects of what other companies did, ranging from photography and promotional cadence to the emphasis on benefits.
In the reevaluation, they discovered that acts of Kindness improved health by reducing cortisol levels and increasing dopamine, resulting in healthier-looking skin, they reported.
Principle 9: An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure (How to Mitigate Risk)
Ridge and Kilmer-Purcell believe that too many entrepreneurs focus on taking big risks in the hopes of becoming “unicorns” and, in the process, overlook smaller risks that undermine their ability to build an enduring business.
Instead of going all in financially, Kilmer-Purcell said he continued to freelance in advertising, prudently taking the advice about preventing problems from Benjamin Franklin.
They did not try to do everything themselves and didn’t over-project, over-hire, or over-invest as so many startups do. They planned for future challenges and adapted their operations as demand grew from modest beginnings to large-scale production.
"We're big fans of setting reasonable goals and stretch goals," Ridge explained. "Take baby steps, set short-term goals, pick the low-hanging fruit, and don't give up if you fail."
They continue to take calculated risks, launching two to three major new products a year.
Principle 10: Many Hands Make Light Work (How to Care for Your Employees)
"We've worked at plenty of companies where it's easy to win by someone else losing or being exploited," they wrote. "We wanted to create a company that could be successful and profitable, where customers and employees were happy. Nothing kills a business more than low employee morale."
In 2022, they commissioned a study to explore the relationship between Kindness and happiness in the workplace. Participants answered questions about 18 acts they would perform for colleagues and expect them to reciprocate. Not surprisingly, the study found a close correlation between Kindness and workplace happiness.
Other research cited by the company found that happy employees are 13% more productive, and organizations that promote this culture tend to be more profitable.
Beekman 1802 also worked with KindWorks.AI to develop kindness habits and connections between its employees.
Principle 11: Two Heads Are Better Than One (How to Be a Partner)
When they began training for "The Amazing Race," the partners knew they weren’t going to be the physically strongest team. In their mid-40s, they were of average height and weight, and while farm chores kept them fit, they faced some formidable competition.
Their goal was to give their company exposure to millions of viewers and, hopefully, avoid being eliminated early. They studied past seasons and noticed that the winners all had one thing in common: good communication. Teams that lost often stopped communicating and started fighting.
The Beekman 1802 duo had a long and successful personal relationship and had created a thriving startup against all odds. They were also skilled at solving puzzles together. Although they never finished first in any of the first 11 legs of the race, they were never eliminated, and in the final episode they overcame the other two teams, who were exhausted and arguing.
The authors cite Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, which starts out, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other."
"An emphasis on partnership often seems absent in business contexts, particularly entrepreneurial ones. Entrepreneurs often have visions others don't see, and they take risks that others may consider crazy. A kind of independence can take hold that crowds out or subverts collaboration…Partnerships can confer huge advantages for leaders of small and medium-sized companies and that all too often, those advantages go partially or entirely untapped."
They emphasize that successful partnerships depend on complementarity, shared goals, and clear rules for resolving disputes.
Principle 12: Love Thy Neighbor (How to Market Kindly)
"When people ask about how we've grown Beekman 1802, we have a really simple answer: Neighbor by Neighbor by Neighbor," they wrote. "One of our primary goals was to build a business that worked not only for us, but also for our community of 547. Before the 20th century, Sharon Springs was a famous spa town that hosted 90,000 visitors every summer. We knew that the most valuable thing we could contribute locally was attracting customers and commerce from outside the region."
In 2010, they organized a Harvest Festival to draw visitors to the village, attracting an impressive 500 attendees. The Beekman duo were filming their TV docuseries around the same time, which included a segment on the event. The following year, attendance jumped to 3,000, and by the 10th anniversary it drew 22,000.
One study estimated that the event injected roughly $8 million into the regional economy.
The takeaway: "Every one of us can make a difference in the people closest to us." Yet, they note, businesses often neglect this principle when it comes to marketing. Corporate campaigns often treat customers as if they were opponents to be tricked into buying.
"When business owners say the customer's always right, the sentiment is really ‘I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to,' rather than seeing an opportunity to develop the relationship."
They’ve empowered their employees to enhance how they provide a solution to any complaint. It's another way Kindness is part of every aspect of Beekman 1802.
"A chatbot or helper from another culture isn't going to understand the same way an informed employee will."
As for their real goats, the authors offer a few final lessons:
- If everyone is running in the same direction, join them.
- A certain level of goat poop is helpful, like cheerleading puffery.
- Taste everything you can (you can always spit it out later).
- Hard decisions today make for easier ones tomorrow.
- Constantly revisit the way your organization is organized.