I am very competitive though. I know that I admit that I hate losing. Most people do. I have lost plenty of times to know what that feels like. So, we spent I don't know $8 million building out this app. I think we sold one. Like, it was my first big idea. We sold nothing. I think mistakes or losing, whatever you want to call it, are probably the most valuable tool that you can ever encounter. Right now, there's two ways. You're always at a fork at the road when you lose. And I'll give you some examples. You always have a fork in the road. Do I put my head down? Do I try to cover it up? Do I try to make it not seem as bad as it was? Do I blame somebody else, which is a classic? It's somebody else's fault. The world is against me.
Or do you say, how do I do better next time to not make that happen? What can I learn from my failure or my mistake that will make me better the next time I do something? It was a great learning, hard learning. I was devastated. But you know,
Never get paralyzed. I mean, maybe for an hour, right? And then you pick yourself up and you say, all right, what can I learn from this?
Something you have to unlearn to become who you are today.
Don't trust anybody. Do it all yourself, right? You need to make sure that you're surrounded by very talented people and talented people only want to be around people who will give them the freedom to grow and learn and do great things.
After you saw that, how did you celebrate? What was your victory lap?
So, I think we barbecued in the backyard. I've always had that perseverance, that endless quest to be better, to learn, and to be the best at whatever it is I'm doing. Whether you know, I think sometimes you never accomplish being the best but the journey is what's so instructive about it.
So you married a Colombian woman.
Beautiful Colombian woman. Any funny stories?
I love my wife more than anything. Oh, don't get her angry.
Hola. Hola. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Chaban podcast. I'm so grateful you guys are here. Whether you've been with me since day one or this is your very first time tuning in. Thank you so much. This space was created for you, for me, for real heart-to-heart conversations that help us all grow, help us heal, evolve, and build that life, the life that we truly deserve. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button right now so we can keep expanding this incredible community. And of course, a huge shout out to our amazing partners at YesYouCan.com who continue to support this mission with the best tools for a healthy lifestyle. Today, I'm super excited. I want to start with something I deeply believe, which is success leaves clues. But to follow those clues, we have to ask the right questions, surround ourselves with the right people, and we have to look at the beliefs behind every single breakthrough. Right? I want to share something very personal with all of you. I was born in Venezuela to immigrant grandparents who fled war and started from zero. Literally zero. They started from scratch. My grandparents were hustlers. They were dreamers. They were doers. They saw shoes door to door, fruits door to door. They opened a small restaurant. They built these small businesses with nothing but grit, nothing but ambition. And with that came a belief system passed down to me. Alejandro, if you own a business, or better yet, when you own your own business, you have to work 24/7. You don't trust anybody. You don't delegate to anybody. You do it all yourself because that's how you build true legacy. That's what my grandfather, also named Alejandro, taught me when I was like eight years old. And as an eight-year-old, I totally believed it. So I thought success in business meant building something you keep forever, like a house, like a last name, a company you pass down, like a family treasure. But over time, I began noticing a different kind of success, one that involved scaling, collaborating, and knowing when to step aside to actually grow even bigger. And I asked myself, how do they do that? What do they have to believe to grow a company and then sell it? Is this a mindset? Is this a skill? Is it a blueprint? I want to learn from those people. I want to learn from the best. And I want you to learn with me because we're not just here to chase success. We're here to understand it. And that means studying the mindset behind it. So today is a great day. I have the honor of sitting down with someone I deeply admire. Not just for what he's built, but for how he thinks, how he leads, and how he leaves. He's known for his billion dollar exits. He sold companies worth over 63 billion. He's been with iconic brands like Botox and Hydroacial and today he's the CEO of Bausch and Lomb. And beyond the boardroom, he's built also a beautiful family and also he married a powerful, beautiful Latina woman. So welcome to the Chaban podcast, my good friend Brent Saunders.
Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.
I know I'm super excited, Brent. I'm ready to jump into all the questions.
I'm a little nervous now.
Oh, you should feel my heart.
I'm not joking. I'm literally excited about having you. So, before we dive into your success story, I want to understand where did it all begin? How did it all get started when you were eight?
You know, I always had a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit in me and I always worked hard. So, I was the kid who would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and deliver the newspapers. Many of your audience probably don't remember people delivering a newspaper, but yes, we used to, my brother and I had the paper route for our community and we would deliver the paper every day. Sunday was the biggest paper and the hardest to do. I grew up in the northeast of the country, so we had bad weather, snow, ice. And we were up in the pitch dark delivering papers. We go to school, come back, and then we would cut grass, do landscaping, shovel people's driveways in the snow. So my brother and I were always hustling and starting businesses or making money. And my parents were just, what are you doing? Do better at school. Don't worry about working.
So who taught you that? Like who taught you to get up in the morning and hustle?
I don't think, you know, my father was a community doctor and worked very hard. And my mother worked as well. So both my parents worked. I didn't have a stay-at-home mom. Maybe it was just emulating being around parents who were always working as well. They were very supportive, very loving, but they were also very committed to their careers and hard work. I think it had to have come from my parents.
Yeah. What values did your family basically pass down?
You know, my family always focused probably on three things. The value of family, right? The importance of family being the most important. They focused on education and they pushed very hard on making sure their three kids studied, did their homework. We weren't allowed to watch TV. We had to read books before we went to bed. They were pretty tough on stuff like that. And then lastly, I think they really supported my brother and I. I have an identical twin brother. That's why I say D. So we were partners in almost everything on starting all these businesses or being active entrepreneurs.
Being a twin, did that make you more competitive?
You know, I don't think I was ever competitive with my brother. To be fair, I am very competitive though.
Oh, I know. I admit that.
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Yeah, I mean, you know, I hate losing. Most people do. I've lost plenty of times to know what that feels like. And I think that's just something that developed in me over time. I've always had this kind of, use the word grit, which is one of my favorite words. I've always had that perseverance, that endless quest to be better, to learn, and to be the best at whatever it is I'm doing. Whether you know, sometimes you never accomplish being the best, but the journey is what's so instructive about it.
What did losing teach you? You said you've lost before. Do you have an example? And what did that teach you? Because sometimes we're in the winning career and we don't really stop and think about sometimes those obstacles become our biggest opportunity.
Yeah. Look, I say this to my teams all the time. I think mistakes or losing, whatever you want to call it, are probably the most valuable tool that you can ever encounter. Right now, there's two ways. You're always at a fork at the road when you lose. And I'll give you some examples. You always have a fork in the road. Do I put my head down? Do I try to cover it up? Do I try to make it not seem as bad as it was? Do I blame somebody else, which is a classic? It's somebody else's fault. The world is against me.
Or do you say, how do I do better next time to not make that happen? What can I learn from my failure or my mistake?
That will make me better the next time I do something. And I've always been on that journey. So, for example, the first big job I got in corporate America was to run consumer products for a company called Schering-Plough, which no longer exists. It was acquired by Merck 20 some years ago. And my brands at the time were like Claritin, Dr. Scholl's, CopperTone, Afrin. I created Miralax. So a bunch of brands. And my first big idea, the first big idea I had was I had watched Oprah had a segment around the neti pot, which was this saline solution. You put up one nostril and it came down the other. Now you can buy it in the drugstore, but this was revolutionary. This was 20 some years ago. And I said, well, you know, we make this drug oxymetazoline, you spray in your nose. I said, why don't we create one out of isotonic seawater called Afrin Pure Sea. The data is pretty good. Oprah already popularized it. So we spent, I don't know, $8 million building out this app. I think we sold one. Like, it was my first big idea. We sold nothing. And I took a lot of time thinking about what did I do wrong. A lot of it was I didn't understand the power of the brand. The brand Afrin itself is a very heavily medicated brand, so people didn't associate that brand with a very natural product. It was a dichotomy and it fell flat. So as I've launched new brands over the last 20 years, I always try to make sure the imagery and the brand is consistent with the product. It was a great learning, hard learning. I was devastated.
You were not paralyzed by it.
Never get paralyzed. I mean maybe for an hour, right? And then you pick yourself up and you say all right, what can I learn from this?
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What happens through your mind when you get paralyzed for an hour? What do you tell yourself? Because it's like that conversation in our heads. You either say you're worthless, see my dad told me.
Well, I'll come to the my dad told me I was worthless thing because I have a philosophy around that too. But that being said, I usually go through I am so stupid. Like what was I thinking? Why did I do that? Why did I make that decision? And that takes about two minutes. And then I say to myself, all right, what can I learn from it? What would you have done differently next time? And then I quickly pivot to making it a much more constructive conversation in my head.
What's something you have to unlearn to become who you are today?
You know, I'll go to something your grandfather said in the opening: don't trust anybody, do it all yourself. And as you scale a business, I think you realize that the most valuable asset in any business is the people who work there. So you do need to trust them. You do need to let people have freedom to operate and make their own mistakes and learn and get better, and coach and mentor them. But that's not a natural instinct of an entrepreneur who wants to do everything themselves. Just like your grandfather said, at some level you always think you're the best at everything or if you want a job done well, do it yourself. But the reality is at scale you can't do that. You need to make sure that you're surrounded by very talented people and talented people only want to be around people who will give them the freedom to grow and learn and do great things.
When you are thinking about scale, what do you focus on? Do you focus on people, structure? What's your success blueprint when growing and scaling a company?
Yeah, I mean I think for me, number one, number two, and number three are talent and people. If you take a big company like my current company, Bausch and Lomb, about 14,000 employees, operate in over 100 markets around the world, we make medicines, lasers, OTC products, vitamins, everything for the eye. When you think about our product cycle, because most of our things are regulatory approved, it ranges from 3 to 10 years to create a new product. The only other ingredient to our company that I can manage over 10 or 15 years is the talent of the people. That's where I can have the most impact and they can have the most impact on our customers. So I really spend a lot of time almost every day thinking about talent. Do we have the right people? Who can I mentor? Who can I coach? Who can I give constructive feedback to? How do I push my team to push their teams to bring the best out of our organization?
What do you look for when you're hiring? What's that?
My number one thing is grit. You used the word, so I'm going to use it. I had the author come and talk to my company. I've read the book multiple times. There's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth. She wrote a book called Grit. I really view it almost as the gospel for how to assess talent and who you want to be around. She did a study to prove it. West Point wanted to know why so many cadets drop out during Hell Week. They looked at academics, physical fitness, a variety of metrics, and it didn't correlate. She came up with a grit score that looked at people's determination, perseverance, resiliency, willingness to learn. West Point uses it to this day. As you really understand who you want to be around, it may not be the Ivy League credentialed person with a great piece of paper on their diploma. It's really someone with a lot of grit. People who are willing to be determined to be successful, have that fire in the belly, who want to be better at what they do, not arrogant, with an endless desire to learn and be better. I think that epitomizes you.
Okay. I'll post it right below so people can go and click it and get it. So talking about business, I have so many questions. I'm ready. How did you first learn? Because I learned you keep a company forever and you pass it down to your children and grandchildren. Then I moved to the US, I meet people like you, and I'm like, how did Brent learn that a company should grow in order to be sold? Is that something you learn? Is it something you go to school for? Or who taught you that?
Yeah, I don't think you learn it, and I'm not sure all companies are grown to be sold. It depends on what your objective is and the type of business you're in. In my world in the pharmaceutical healthcare medical device world, our customers consolidated. If you go back not that long ago, you had a community pharmacy, you didn't have managed care, you didn't have insurance. Now you're down to Walgreens and CVS, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Humana. The customer world consolidated and their strength became so severe that the pharmaceutical industry had to consolidate as well to keep up. So you have to look at secular trends in your industry to understand which way the wind is blowing and what's strategically the right thing for the business.
How do you know when a company should be sold or should be?
I think you have to start with strategic logic. First, you have to say does scale matter? You're generally selling to get scale or create cost synergies, or even better if you can find revenue synergies. If we're both selling to the same customer at a customer acquisition cost of roughly the same, but if we combined our portfolio we could cut that in half, then there's a synergy. So I think you have to think strategically. Does one plus one equal more than two? And then financially, does it make sense? Is the premium and time value of money you're going to get today for selling more valuable to you or your shareholders than waiting it out for the next several years, incorporating all the risks of execution and everything else?
So when someone comes and says they want to grow their business, when do you choose organic growth versus inorganic growth?
Again, it's very fact-based. You have to say, all deals, buying or selling, is there strategic rationale? Then do the financials make sense? Some people start with the money and try to figure back into does this make sense strategically. I always say start with the strategic rationale. If you can't explain the reason why the deal is good in what I call the elevator pitch in 30 seconds or less, it's probably not a good idea. If I have to have a PowerPoint presentation and really think about it for an hour whether I should buy or sell this, the answer is probably that's not the right deal because it's too complex. It should be pretty intuitive strategically. You explain it to me in 30 seconds and I say that makes sense. Then you need to spend a whole lot more time digging into the financials, but strategically if you don't have it quick, don't do it.
Wow. When someone comes to you and says, hey Brent, I want to sell my company, what's your advice? Where do they begin?
Well, the first question I would ask is why? Are they tired? Are they not happy doing it anymore? Do they feel they've hit the ceiling? And if so, is that because they need more coaching or they truly have? What's the real reason you want to sell? I will tell you, people do come to me and eight or nine times out of ten, when they start to explain, I'm like, you don't really want to sell. You're just having a bad week. You're aggravated. Somebody quit or somebody sued you. You really don't want to sell. But every once in a while you get to someone's who's ready to retire, has grandchildren, their kids don't want the business. Then you figure out the best way to set up a process to sell. Who may be interested? How many strategic acquirers would there be? Is there private equity that would be interested? If so, can you get more than one? Because nothing's worse than trying to sell your business and only have one bidder. You want to have a competitive process.
Yeah, I think it's also sometimes it could be so tied to your identity, your job or your title. How do you separate those?
After you saw that, how did you celebrate? What was your victory lap?
Well, we closed in May of 2020. If you remember what was happening in May 2020, the world thought the world was coming to an end, the beginning of the COVID hysteria. You couldn't travel, couldn't do anything. So we barbecued in the backyard. I think we got some fish and vegetables and barbecued in the backyard.
So you would have thought you were going to celebrate with a big party? I was thinking maybe a trip with my wife, but no, it was just a barbecue.
Once we were having coffee and you told me that it takes a different skill set to take a company from 20 million to 100 million and then to 500 million. What do you mean and what are those differences?
Yeah, I'll go back to what we were saying earlier. As you scale a company, you go from, let's say, 0 to 10 million, maybe it's you and a handful of employees. When you go to 20 million, it's a lot more. Then you get to 40 or 50 million and maybe you don't know everybody's name as well. As you go to 100 million, you might recognize some faces, but you don't know everybody. So you really have to trust the team around you. You have to have great levels of talent throughout the organization that buy into the mission, the culture, the value of the enterprise. People you trust. They don't have to be your best friends, but they have to be people you enjoy working with, that you respect, that you can learn from. Even if they work for you, you can learn from people. You need to build a great organization. That's a different skill than doing everything yourself.
Yeah, it completely changes. I think you also have to think about so many other aspects of the business. When you're starting, you're just thinking about marketing, and then you really start to think about all other aspects.
Yeah, certainly the financials become more complex. Working capital, accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing, invoicing, taxes. All that stuff becomes much more complicated. Payroll, benefits. All those things become more professionalized the bigger you become. But you need people who really know how to do that stuff.
You studied law, so you're a lawyer, right?
I don't like to admit it, but I did go to law school. Yes.
What made you pivot from the courtroom to the boardroom?
I really never practiced law. My first semester of law school, I said to myself, this is not for me. Then I said, do I drop out or do I finish? I started something, so I'm a big believer if you start something, finish it. So I powered through, did really well, got out on the other end. Then I went to business school at night and started consulting. I never really practiced law for maybe a year. So it was quick.
I also found out while I was in my first semester, this is not for me. But it was a great education though.
Yeah, it's a great experience. Now running a company, it helps. You look at contracts from a different perspective.
You just mentioned ChatGPT. When you don't know something, what's your move? Do you call someone, a mentor, or ChatGPT?
I do use ChatGPT. I think it's an amazing tool. But I'm a big reader too. I start every morning pretty much the same around 5:30 every morning, having a cup of coffee, reading the news. I read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover. I go through industry trade magazines and articles. Then I look at the general news. Then I check X because I like my feed the way I curated it. I have all different points of views. Then I go to the gym and then I go to the office. When I don't know something, I still Google a lot and look for thoughtful articles. If it's a scientific issue, I'll go to science journals. If it's a business problem, I'll look at Harvard Business Review. Or I'll call people, mentors, other CEOs, or friends, or board members, and say, 'Hey, have you ever encountered this? How do you do that?' I do that regularly. I enjoy it.
Success leaves clues, right? That goes back to grit. That endless quest to want to learn.
I'm always trying to teach myself something new. I love it.
Have you ever felt like you didn't belong? Like sometimes you get into a group of people you consider more successful or smarter. Have you ever felt like I don't belong here?
I probably have. What immediately comes to mind is when I became a CEO very young of a Fortune 500 company. I remember joining the Business Roundtable, which has people like Jamie Dimon and Jeff Bezos. I remember showing up at the meetings for the first year thinking, how do I fit in? What am I doing here? That's probably the most vivid memory of feeling that way. But it didn't matter. In the end it all worked out. But I remember feeling a little awkward.
Do you have always been popular or the winner, or have you ever failed like the underdog when you were a kid?
I'm sure I have, but I was president of my class in high school, president of student government in college, editor-in-chief of the law review. I always felt if I was going to do something, I would try to be the best at it. I'd like to lead it. Even if I have to invest 10 years. I remember when I started at my first big job at Schering-Plough, I said to myself, I want to be CEO one day. I remember talking to the then CEO and he's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Right, kid? Don't worry. And so I see him. I still see him. He's a
Great mentor of mine. And he says to me, you know, I remember you coming in thinking there's no way this kid will ever be a CEO. He said, 'But I kept throwing stuff at you and you would exceed my expectations and I give you something harder.'
Crazier and you would exceed and for eight, nine years you just did that and I kept promoting you and promoting you and he said, you know, you just kept doing it.
Do you think that's something that you're born with or it's a muscle that you develop?
I think it's both. I think you're born with the desire, the passion, the fire, the grit maybe. And then I think you have to be disciplined and work hard. There's no substitute for hard work. As much as people like to try to find it or think it exists, it's like the fountain of youth. It doesn't exist, right?
I mean, you tell us, you know, all the secrets.
Well, we can ask Pun Leone, but it doesn't exist, right? There are no shortcuts in life, right? And so, you know, Michael Jordan didn't become the best basketball player by taking Saturdays off or feeling bad for himself, right? He played a rigorous schedule, practiced every day, practiced on weekends, he actually loved the game, he played for fun. Um, but, you know, I think it's like anything else. You see a great athlete, you see someone who's really accomplished something in their career professionally and they make it look easy. So you think it's easy. The reality is they work their ass off to get there. And they continue to work their ass off every day. Um, and even if they make it look easy, they're going home and they're studying, they're reading, they're preparing, they're reading every financial detail, they're going through spreadsheets, right, to come in and make it look easy every day.
Wow. Yeah. It's so true. Yeah. What about talking about the fountain of youth, what do you see in the future of healthcare and beauty?
Yes. So very connected to that space. Have built a lot of great brands and products in that space.
Why did you choose health?
You know, it probably was the job I had while I was in law school was in a hospital. And so I and my father was a doctor. So I think I was just very comfortable in that space. It may sound a little corny, but this idea that you can make something and sell it or you can make something that helps somebody and sell it, right? The mission of doing that feels a lot better than just making a stapler. I know it can help you put paper together, but it's not the same as helping somebody with asthma or diabetes. Right. Or Botox.
Right. Hey, but you know, we sold more Botox for therapeutic use than aesthetic.
Oh, wow. I did not know that.
It's an amazing therapeutic drug for spasticity disorders, movement disorders, migraines. You know, if you had a kid with cerebral palsy and they inject their legs, they can walk again. I mean, it's truly an amazing drug.
Yeah. So where is that going? How do you see the future of healthcare and beauty? Where's that?
Yeah. I mean, I think that I invest a lot personally in this space. I'm really excited about the science that's emerging into this space. I think what you're going to start to see is a lot of the beauty industry is based on marketing. Fancy packaging, marketing claims, right? The fountain of youth this and that. The reality is you're just buying very expensive sunscreen. It sits on the top of your skin, doesn't penetrate, it doesn't do anything, right? I think what you're seeing come out now is real science going into looking for ways to actually solve the underlying causes of aging of skin or senescence of skin. And so I think the next couple years are going to be super exciting. From that perspective, I think you're going to see some amazing products with novel approaches to skin health, skin anti-aging, if you will, or skin rejuvenation.
