The Smell of Memory with scent designer Dawn Goldworm | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

Simon Sinek 0:00 The sense most closely connected to memory is smell.

Dawn Goldworm 0:04 It's conditioned, right?

Simon Sinek 0:05 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 0:05 So depending on your culture, your generation, and your living environment, you smell different ingredients, different fragrances, and they're linked to different emotional experiences you're having. So like the smell of cow, for instance. If someone lives in a rural environment, they don't think anything of it. But other people are like, "Oh my God, what's that smell? I would rather smell their nose."

Simon Sinek 0:21 Whereas as a New Yorker, the smell of garbage I find inoffensive [laughs] but the smell of cows, absolutely awful.

Dawn Goldworm 0:27 Yeah. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 0:28 [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 0:28 Exactly. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 0:30 Are there particular scents that are universally around the world liked?

Dawn Goldworm 0:34 Yes. Vanilla. Vanilla is the chemical sister of an ingredient called vanillin, and vanillin occurs in breast milk. So the first time your mother is holding you, you feel safe, you feel loved, and you're smelling her breast milk, you're smelling, uh, maybe some kind of baby product. It reminds us of being cuddled and safety and comfort and Mommy and all the good things.

Simon Sinek 0:55 So which is why we all love vanilla 'cause it's basically babyhood. [whimsical music] Dawn, thanks for joining me on the old podcast. Uh, it's fun to have you on because I think what you do is so fun and so special. Just to give people a little context for how I know you and how we met, you and I by sheer coincidence were seated at the same table at some event a lotta years ago.

Dawn Goldworm 1:22 Right.

Simon Sinek 1:22 And I had heard your presentation that day about using scent as a, an, uh, for branding, and I thought your presentation was amazing.

Dawn Goldworm 1:31 Thank you.

Simon Sinek 1:31 And by sheer just coincidence, we were sat- seated next to each other at the dinner, and I leaned over to you and I said, "Could you scent a book? Is that possible?" And you went, "Yes, that's possible." And I said, "Has it ever been done before?" And you said, "No, I don't think so."

Dawn Goldworm 1:44 Mm.

Simon Sinek 1:44 I said, "I would like to scent a book." And this became the beginning of a partnership and friendship of the two of us.

Dawn Goldworm 1:50 Yes.

Simon Sinek 1:51 And for those of you who have ever read my book, Together is Better, spoiler alert, 'cause we've always kept it a secret, so it's a little surprise for people who buy it, but the book is scented. And you developed that scent for me, which is the smell of optimism.

Dawn Goldworm 2:06 Yes. It is the smell of you.

Simon Sinek 2:09 The smell of me. The smell of my personality.

Dawn Goldworm 2:11 Right.

Simon Sinek 2:12 So first of all, let's take a, let's go back down memory lane. You are what is called a nose, meaning you develop scents for a living. And you have been doing this for how long?

Dawn Goldworm 2:22 Um, I started in my early 20s in perfumery school, so-

Simon Sinek 2:26 A long time

Dawn Goldworm 2:27 ... like a quarter of a century.

Simon Sinek 2:28 Okay.

Dawn Goldworm 2:29 Ouch.

Simon Sinek 2:29 [laughs] So you're ... This, I assume, for most people who are noses, perfume is the direction you generally go in.

Dawn Goldworm 2:38 Yes, you can go into fine fragrance, which is perfume for skin. You can go into ancillaries, like body wash, shampoo, et cetera. You can go into home care, laundry detergent. Um, you can also become a flavorist and develop flavors, which is the same industry. Most people don't know that.

Simon Sinek 2:52 Interesting. Interesting.

Dawn Goldworm 2:52 The s- the taste of Coca-Cola, Dannon yogurt, everything that we put into our mouth is flavored by the same people that create fragrance. Um, but in general, the perfumery school that I went to, you would become a fine fragrance perfumer for skin.

Simon Sinek 3:06 Okay. So perfumes that you buy at, at-

Dawn Goldworm 3:08 Traditional

Simon Sinek 3:09 ... traditional perfume.

Dawn Goldworm 3:10 Right.

Simon Sinek 3:10 Then h- what is the path ... Uh, 'cause you worked at the highest levels. I mean, you were working perfumes for names that we know.

Dawn Goldworm 3:17 W- I worked for Givaudan for almost 10 years and I did everything from Lady Gaga to Adidas to the Beckhams. Most of the mass-market fragrances in the United States, and a lot in the rest of the world, sure.

Simon Sinek 3:29 So if you ever wore Lady Gaga's perfume, you were the one who developed that.

Dawn Goldworm 3:33 I did.

Simon Sinek 3:33 Which is kinda cool. That's very cool, actually. You developed the smell of Lady Gaga.

Dawn Goldworm 3:37 Sure.

Simon Sinek 3:37 Um, uh, okay. So how do you go from what I would call a fairly traditional, successful career as a nose in a, in a perfume direction to really pioneering, 'cause you are a pioneer in this space, really pioneering using b- leaving perfume to make bra- scents for brands? Like how did that even ha- I, I'll be honest with you. In all the years I've known you, I actually have no idea- [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 4:01 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 4:01 ... how that, you went from th- that to the other thing.

Dawn Goldworm 4:04 You know, when I, um-

Simon Sinek 4:05 Never asked

Dawn Goldworm 4:07 ... when I had my nose tested, I was, I was finishing up graduate school in London. I was an art history major, and then I did a master's in art business. I thought I was gonna be in the art world. And it didn't turn out that way. I interned at Avon when I was young, and then, um, someone from Avon called me and said, "Hey, we have a spot. Do you wanna work for us?" And I wasn't sure. But I came back to New York, and she sent me to a perfumery school, and I had my nose tested. I had no idea that I had this innate ability, which is, by the way, like any ability, 5%, and then it's 95% blood, sweat, and tears after to learn how to use it. And, um, I fell in love with it. I fell so deeply in love with it, that when I started developing fragrance for skin, I was like, "There has to be more. It's has to be more than just applying it to skin." And so I went back to graduate school at NYU in the evenings while I was in perfumery school in the morning, working at Givaudan at this point during the day, and I started looking into the psychology behind scent, the little research that was at the time, the sociology around scent, behavioral, um, aspects behind scent, anything that I could tap into, consumer identities, studies, anything I could find. And then I made it into a business case. I was like, what if brands could apply scent and have that same emotional bond that we do when we apply it to our skin or to our babies or to our house? And this is how it was born.

Simon Sinek 5:22 So, and I think people don't realize

Simon Sinek 5:23 that the sense most closely connected to memory is smell.

Dawn Goldworm 5:27 Oh, yeah. So if you think about how you process the other senses, so if you think about your sense of sight, your sense of touch, your sense of taste, your s- your sense of hearing, once you get that input, it has to go through many neural pathways to get to the place in the brain that comprehends what it actually just heard or, or felt or-

Simon Sinek 5:47 Saw

Dawn Goldworm 5:47 ... saw.

Simon Sinek 5:48 There you go.

Dawn Goldworm 5:49 Your nose, odor molecules kind of float around the outside of your nose. They go up your nose, and at the top of your nose is the only place that your brain is exposed to air. And so the odor molecules go right up to your limbic system. It's a super highway. No stop-and-go, no collecting $200. There's nothing else that happens. And then once it gets to your limbic system, the only other two things that happen there are ... emotion and memory. And so every time you smell something from the time you're born, and actually a little bit before you're born, to 10 years old, every time you smell something, you have a feeling about it. They're both novel experiences you're having, and they become linked together and forever married, floating in your olfactive memory, which becomes the largest and most acute part of your memory. So later in life, every time you smell something, you're immediately brought back to that first moment you smelt it, and more importantly, that first feeling. And I often say I'm not creating a scent, I'm creating an emotional resonance for you.

Simon Sinek 6:44 I- and it's so true, right? It's like, I mean, y- y- I go into a space and it smells like my grandparents' house smelled, which was a pretty unique smell. My grandfather worked, you know, as an engineer, and so the smell of sort of like industrial lubricant, like, was on him at all times. And they were antiques dealers, so there was like a mustiness in an old house-

Dawn Goldworm 7:03 It does

Simon Sinek 7:03 ... an old Victorian house, even pre-Victorian. And so there's ... And that all came together to be the smell of Grandma and Grandpa's house, which wasn't a bad smell. It was a beautiful smell, and, but quite unique. And it's true, the few times I've been somewhere with that smell, i- immediately I'm transported to walking in the door for the first time from visiting from America. And I open the door and walk into that hallway, and that smell hits me of familiarity and nostalgia. It's so tr- it's instantaneous.

Dawn Goldworm 7:29 And it creates a loyalty.

Simon Sinek 7:30 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 7:30 So when you apply it as a business case to a brand, you can help create that emotional bond that the brand is trying to create through all the other touchpoints that you mentioned.

Simon Sinek 7:40 Oh, that's so interesting.

Dawn Goldworm 7:40 And that's what creates the loyalty.

Simon Sinek 7:42 That's so interesting. So if I have a good experience in a store that you have scented, then I can be reminded of that experience somewhere else if I smell similar notes somewhere else.

Dawn Goldworm 7:51 And if you buy whatever product the store i- is selling and it's scented, when you're at home, all you're gonna think about is returning to that store and buying more.

Simon Sinek 8:01 H- is that manipulative?

Dawn Goldworm 8:03 So this is the way that smell works. So it's, it's conditioned, right?

Simon Sinek 8:06 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 8:06 So depending on your culture, your generation, and your living environment, like I was saying, you smell different ingredients, different fragrances, and they're linked to different emotional experiences you're having. So the first time your mother is holding you, you feel safe, hopefully. You feel loved, hopefully. And you're smelling her breast milk. You're smelling, uh, maybe some kind of baby product, which is cultural, and it changes on different places in the world. So lavender isn't a thing for all cultures to make them feel safe and tired-

Simon Sinek 8:33 Mm-hmm

Dawn Goldworm 8:33 ... as people think it is. Spray lavender on your pillow, that won't work for the entire east of the world.

Simon Sinek 8:37 No kidding.

Dawn Goldworm 8:38 Yeah, it only works for certain parts of Europe, certain parts of the United States, and some of South America.

Simon Sinek 8:43 Only because when we were babies somebody sprayed lavender or l-

Dawn Goldworm 8:45 No, it's because there's lavender in baby products.

Simon Sinek 8:47 There's lavender in baby products?

Dawn Goldworm 8:48 And it's a cultural phenomenon. Like in the South of France, they use orange blossom. They don't use it at all in Asia.

Simon Sinek 8:52 So orange blossom makes somebody feel relaxed?

Dawn Goldworm 8:55 Yes. So it's all based on that.

Simon Sinek 8:56 No kidding.

Dawn Goldworm 8:57 So when you're running on the beach as a kid, hopefully your parents put sunblock on you.

Simon Sinek 9:01 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 9:01 Right? You're feeling fun for the first time.

Simon Sinek 9:02 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 9:02 You're feeling free. That smell of whatever that sunblock was, Hawaiian Tropic, let's say-

Simon Sinek 9:07 Coconut

Dawn Goldworm 9:07 ... or coconut. But again, it's cultural. So in Europe, they use a different flower. They don't use, um, coconut and pineapple like we use here. They will use something else. A neroli, for instance. And so that would make people feel like the beach there versus here, totally different.

Simon Sinek 9:22 Wow, okay.

Dawn Goldworm 9:23 And this is all based on generation as well. So products have changed every 10 years, and with the globalization of product, it's gotten a lot mixed up. So it's, it's-

Simon Sinek 9:31 For example? For example?

Dawn Goldworm 9:31 ... very layered.

Simon Sinek 9:32 This is very interesting. So I understand the, the c- the cultural element.

Dawn Goldworm 9:35 Right.

Simon Sinek 9:35 Tell me something where a smell for one generation is no longer relevant for a different generation.

Dawn Goldworm 9:40 Well, with the invention of plastic. So toys used to be made out of wood.

Simon Sinek 9:44 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 9:44 So and then anyone that was born, let's say, up to definitely in the 1940s, post-1940s when you started seeing plastic-

Simon Sinek 9:52 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 9:52 ... toys started to be made out of plastic. And so when people would smell wood, they would think of their childhood. Not anymore.

Simon Sinek 9:58 Not anymore. Tell me another one. This is so good.

Dawn Goldworm 10:01 CO2 off gases, my favorite topic.

Simon Sinek 10:05 Uh, is-

Dawn Goldworm 10:05 So [laughs]

Simon Sinek 10:06 G- go on. [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 10:07 So with the way that sneakers are made, everyone thinks that they're smelling leather, they're smelling rubber. They're smelling adhesives is mostly what they're smelling, and they're smelling the breakdown of all these ingredients once they're made and they're heated up and put in a box. And so when you open a new box of sneakers, a lot of what you're smelling is these off gases, and people love the smell because they feel like it's newness and luxury, and, um, and I put it in so many fragrances.

Simon Sinek 10:31 So wait a minute. Let, I have to say this again. So it's the leather, the rubber, and the glue.

Dawn Goldworm 10:36 It's the volatile molecules that break down once they're all put together.

Simon Sinek 10:39 What's a volatile molecule?

Dawn Goldworm 10:41 Molecules that, um, disperse. They don't stay inside of a product. They, they float around so you can smell them.

Simon Sinek 10:46 Okay, so the reason I can smell leather when I'm not right up close to it is-

Dawn Goldworm 10:48 'Cause there's a whole bunch of volatile molecules coming off of it

Simon Sinek 10:49 ... because there's all these molecules that are coming off of the leather.

Dawn Goldworm 10:51 Yeah. But you know, leather doesn't actually smell like leather.

Simon Sinek 10:54 What?

Dawn Goldworm 10:54 Well, it's the skin of an animal. It smells like a dead animal. We treat it to smell like leather.

Simon Sinek 10:59 We... What?

Dawn Goldworm 11:00 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 11:01 And leather d-

Dawn Goldworm 11:02 No

Simon Sinek 11:02 ... so then why does all leather smell like leather?

Dawn Goldworm 11:03 Have you ever smelled a cow?

Simon Sinek 11:05 Yeah, they don't smell good.

Dawn Goldworm 11:06 That's where leather comes from.

Simon Sinek 11:08 But I always figured the hide-

Dawn Goldworm 11:09 It smells leather after they dry

Simon Sinek 11:09 ... when it doesn't have, like, blood rushing through it. No.

Dawn Goldworm 11:12 No, it gets treated. 臭 味 。

Simon Sinek 11:12 So is it a coincidence? Like, did they design the smell of leather?

Dawn Goldworm 11:15 Yeah, so-

Simon Sinek 11:15 Like, did leather smell the same 200 years ago as it smells now?

Dawn Goldworm 11:19 Yes and no. So Catherine de Medici was the first one to create commercial perfume in Florence. She came through Grasse, which is the historical home of perfume-

Simon Sinek 11:28 In France

Dawn Goldworm 11:28 ... because Grasse was the center of leather, and they would scent saddles, and they would scent gloves in Grasse. One, because they, you know, no one wanted to smell like a dead animal-

Simon Sinek 11:38 Right

Dawn Goldworm 11:38 ... on top of another animal-

Simon Sinek 11:40 Right

Dawn Goldworm 11:40 ... which would have been very strange. And then she came to Paris, and then the center of perfume, m- you know, around the m- m- let's say, latter 1800s, beginning of the 1900s, s- Paris became the commercial center of perfume.

Simon Sinek 11:52 Uh-huh.

Dawn Goldworm 11:52 And so all leather smelt the same because it was all done in the same place, essentially.

Simon Sinek 11:56 And is that the smell today?

Dawn Goldworm 11:57 Um, I actually don't know the answer to that.

Simon Sinek 11:59 We don't know the answer.

Dawn Goldworm 11:59 But I would assume it's close, but probably not the same.

Simon Sinek 12:03 So what do we add to make the smell of leather? This is so interesting to me.

Dawn Goldworm 12:06 So there's no ingredient that smells like leather. It's an accord, essentially. So it's these little tiny formulas we make up to make something smell like something. So I've never actually broken down the accord of leather

Simon Sinek 12:20 Aha, I like it

Dawn Goldworm 12:21 Yeah

Simon Sinek 12:21 I've given you a challenge.

Dawn Goldworm 12:22 You have.

Simon Sinek 12:22 So, so-

Dawn Goldworm 12:23 Now I feel like I'm gonna go back and [laughs]

Simon Sinek 12:24 So, so this is the thing that I like. Just to go off on a, I have, I, I need to come back to this, but before I do,

Simon Sinek 12:29 as we ta- you talk about accord, it's the same as a chord in music.

Dawn Goldworm 12:34 Uh, yes, exactly. It's exactly the same thing. So we have notes and then we have chords. So we have notes, which would be our ingredients, which are raw materials that could be natural, or we call them molecules, which are synthetically made by scientists. Um, and then we make them into accords, which are a s- a small amount of notes. It could be anywhere between two and, I don't know, seven.

Simon Sinek 12:53 'Cause I love the way you think about, you talk about scent. You say color, there's only three primary colors. That's it.

Dawn Goldworm 12:57 Right.

Simon Sinek 12:57 And in, in, in music, there's only seven notes. That's it. And it's how Beethoven organizes and combines those notes that make a symphony. It's how, uh, Van Gogh organizes and mixes those three primary colors that you get the magic of a Van Gogh, and there's only a finite number of notes-

Dawn Goldworm 13:15 Right

Simon Sinek 13:15 ... for scent, and it's how you combine them into chords or accords and use them that makes things flowery, magical, vanilla-y, whatever.

Dawn Goldworm 13:24 Absolutely. There was, when I started training, there was about 4,500 that we had to, there was a lot.

Simon Sinek 13:30 4,500.

Dawn Goldworm 13:30 Ingredients

Simon Sinek 13:30 Which is much more than three primary colors or seven-

Dawn Goldworm 13:32 Right

Simon Sinek 13:32 ... seven notes.

Dawn Goldworm 13:33 Now there's about 1,500. A lot of them have been taken off the palette for a variety of reasons. Um, the fragrance industry by nature is-

Simon Sinek 13:39 Still a lot of notes

Dawn Goldworm 13:40 ... yeah, is sustainable, and so we take a lot of things from the earth, and we're very careful with how much we take from the earth. We constantly think about how we can regenerate. It's unlike food, where they can make mass amounts of food and kind of ruin the soil so there's no nutrients or smell or taste in food.

Simon Sinek 13:55 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 13:55 We can't do that. Our flower needs to smell the same year over year, or as close to it as we can make it, and so the soil has to stay very nutrient-rich and dense so that we can produce the ingredients-

Simon Sinek 14:05 So interesting

Dawn Goldworm 14:05 ... that we need. So we have about 1,500 that we use today.

Simon Sinek 14:07 Let's go back to that box of sneakers. So there's scent coming off of the artificial leather smell, which is the smell of leather for all leather. There's the scent coming off of the rubber.

Dawn Goldworm 14:19 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 14:20 There's the scent coming off of the glue in a hot box on a truck on a ship.

Dawn Goldworm 14:24 Mm.

Simon Sinek 14:24 It's been sitting in the cardboard.

Dawn Goldworm 14:26 And the cardboard smell too.

Simon Sinek 14:27 And the cardboard smell as well.

Dawn Goldworm 14:28 Mm.

Simon Sinek 14:29 It's all been sitting in there.

Dawn Goldworm 14:30 And if there's any plastic on the shoelaces, remember.

Simon Sinek 14:32 Yeah, all of that.

Dawn Goldworm 14:33 Mm.

Simon Sinek 14:33 So it's all sitting in there and being focused and condensed 'cause it's in a box-

Dawn Goldworm 14:39 Mm

Simon Sinek 14:39 ... not, with no, uh, ability to escape, and then you open it, and you, we are hit with that combination 'cause new sneaker smell is a unique and specific smell.

Dawn Goldworm 14:49 You know, when I worked with Nike, they wanted the smell of, um, Air Force 1.

Simon Sinek 14:54 Okay.

Dawn Goldworm 14:54 They didn't want Air Max, they didn't want Jordans. They wanted the smell of Air Force 1 specifically, which smells different than the other two.

Simon Sinek 15:00 Because of the amount of leather-

Dawn Goldworm 15:01 Because of the, yeah

Simon Sinek 15:01 ... the glue, the, all the combination of the materials.

Dawn Goldworm 15:03 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 15:03 And I, that is so brilliant because we, the, the magic of getting this new thing and being hit by it, as you said, it's not innate, it's cultural, where we then learn that that smell is the magic of a new pair of sneakers, which means you can recreate artificially the smell of a new pair of sneakers, and you can pump it into a store. Did you do that for Nike? What is...

Dawn Goldworm 15:22 I did do that for Nike. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 15:23 So tell me, what did you, so what, how did Nike use,

Simon Sinek 15:25 how does Nike use smell?

Dawn Goldworm 15:27 So-

Simon Sinek 15:27 Or, uh, artificially produced, like the way you do it.

Dawn Goldworm 15:29 Right

Simon Sinek 15:29 Not just, you know, stuff in a box.

Dawn Goldworm 15:31 I have to say today, um, we don't work with Nike, but we did for years.

Simon Sinek 15:35 Okay.

Dawn Goldworm 15:35 Um, this is pre-COVID. So Nike was an incredible challenge for me. Talk about a challenge, and I love a good challenge. Nike was, and still is, one of the biggest brands in the world, and so when I do what I did for you, as you know, I look very much at the target market. Who are you talking to? With Nike, their target market is enormous.

Simon Sinek 15:54 Mm.

Dawn Goldworm 15:54 But at the time when they designed everything, it was designed for a 17-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy, but still all over the world. So we talk about cultural conditioning, China, Brazil, Germany, New York, the entire world. How do you do that? And so when I was looking at this, I was like, "Okay, but Nike's emotion, as everyone knows, is inspiration." And so I was like, "Okay, what inspires these 17-year-old girls and 19-year-old boys all over the world?" And so I worked with Nike for about two years, and I did a bunch of Nike experiences. Nike has its own soccer pitches. They have their own basketball courts. They have... I designed a pair of shoes with one of their big shoe designers. Like, I did so many things, and what I realized, it's the smell of sport. It's the feeling of about to play a sport that is the inspiration. And so we recreated the smell of a soccer cleat in dirt. We have a dirt molecule, a grass molecule, and the smell of the shoe, which is a mixture of metal and leather and sweat. We recreated the smell of a basketball as it gets oily from your hand.

Simon Sinek 16:55 Wow.

Dawn Goldworm 16:55 We recreated the sound of a pair of sneakers when you skid on a basketball court. The lin- linoleum and the rubber heat up and create a very fascinating smell that everyone knows.

Simon Sinek 17:05 So when the squeak happens, a smell happens.

Dawn Goldworm 17:07 Because it warms up, and it releases off-gases.

Simon Sinek 17:09 It releases an off-gas, and that, and that-

Dawn Goldworm 17:11 And those volatile molecules have a-

Simon Sinek 17:13 Wow

Dawn Goldworm 17:13 ... very specific smell.

Simon Sinek 17:14 Yes, yes, yes.

Dawn Goldworm 17:15 Um, and you can smell it when you're at a basketball game. Um, we recreated the smell of when you're at the gym, and you're sweating, and your sweat mixes with that rubber on the gym equipment.

Simon Sinek 17:23 Sure.

Dawn Goldworm 17:23 And we took [laughs] the smell of a pair of Air Force 1 when you open the box, and then we added a little bit of magic, which we don't talk about, and that was the smell of Nike. And what is fascinating about it-

Simon Sinek 17:33 But you do all of those smells

Dawn Goldworm 17:34 ... and put them together.

Simon Sinek 17:34 And put them together.

Dawn Goldworm 17:35 They're all accords. They're all accords.

Simon Sinek 17:36 Wouldn't that-

Dawn Goldworm 17:36 And we put them together

Simon Sinek 17:37 ... I mean, I, I hate to say it, uh, and I know this is a naive thing to say, but if I took, you know, my favorite phrase from a, a Police song and my favorite phrase from a Beatles song and my favorite f- phrase or chord from a, uh, you know, a Beethoven symphony, put them to- all together, what I'll get is noise. So how is all of these things, the cleats, the oily basketball, the smell, how is that not an, a nasal mess?

Dawn Goldworm 18:00 Have you ever seen a Monet?

Simon Sinek 18:02 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 18:02 How many colors are in a Monet?

Simon Sinek 18:03 Fair point. Fair point.

Dawn Goldworm 18:05 Same thing.

Simon Sinek 18:05 Okay.

Dawn Goldworm 18:05 If you know how to layer sound, if you know how to layer color and texture and aesthetic, you do the same thing with smell. There are anywhere between three and, uh, 200-plus ingredients in a perfume. These are the shortest formulas Pretty much in the industry. I don't like to make complex formulas. But there are chords. There are little accords that all go together, and together they make a symphony.

Simon Sinek 18:26 What is the s- so I'm so f- so where would I smell the smell of Nike? 'Cause I'm dying to smell the smell.

Dawn Goldworm 18:30 Well, I can show it to you.

Simon Sinek 18:31 I would love that.

Dawn Goldworm 18:32 They used it in all the Nike labs and all the private member spaces. Um, we did scent, uh, shopping bags at one point, and I think shoelaces. Um, but what's fascinating about Nike is we still show it-

Simon Sinek 18:42 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 18:42 ... today when we're working with a new client-

Simon Sinek 18:44 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 18:44 ... or just hanging out with someone that wants to smell.

Simon Sinek 18:46 I wanna smell.

Dawn Goldworm 18:47 And they smell it, and I don't tell them what it is, and they say, "Sneakers. Gr- this is Nike." They don't say Puma. They don't say Adidas. They don't say Reebok. They don't say any other sneaker brand. They just say Nike.

Simon Sinek 18:59 Wow.

Dawn Goldworm 18:59 Which is fascinating, and it's the Air Force One piece. And I used to say to people, they're like, "Oh, but I love the smell of the Nike store." I'm like, "What do you think, basketballs are just, like, [laughs] giving off scent?" I mean, yes, of course, there's, like, vital molecules around basketballs, but-

Simon Sinek 19:14 But not, not enough

Dawn Goldworm 19:14 ... but not of that level

Simon Sinek 19:14 ... not enough that you would have a scent experience in a

Simon Sinek 19:17 store.

Dawn Goldworm 19:17 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 19:18 So interesting. Are there scents, are there particular scents that are universally around the world liked and universally around the world disliked?

Dawn Goldworm 19:26 Yes.

Simon Sinek 19:27 Okay.

Dawn Goldworm 19:27 There's one for each.

Simon Sinek 19:29 Only one?

Dawn Goldworm 19:29 Only one.

Simon Sinek 19:30 So there's one smell in the entire world that everybody likes?

Dawn Goldworm 19:32 Yes.

Simon Sinek 19:32 Which is what?

Dawn Goldworm 19:33 Vanilla.

Simon Sinek 19:34 It is, it is really good.

Dawn Goldworm 19:35 And you know why?

Simon Sinek 19:35 Vanilla's really good. [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 19:36 Do you know why? Do you know why it's vanilla?

Simon Sinek 19:38 'Cause it smells like cookies.

Dawn Goldworm 19:39 No. Um-

Simon Sinek 19:40 Geez

Dawn Goldworm 19:40 ... there's a large part of the world that don't eat cookies. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 19:43 [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 19:44 Um, vanilla is the chemical sister of an ingredient called vanillin, and vanillin occurs in breast milk. And if you weren't breastfed and you had formula, they reproduce that smell for formula.

Simon Sinek 19:55 So whether it's natural breast milk or formula, you th- you get-

Dawn Goldworm 19:58 Vanilla

Simon Sinek 19:59 ... something that is close to vanilla.

Dawn Goldworm 20:00 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 20:00 So which is why we all love vanilla, 'cause it's basically babyhood.

Dawn Goldworm 20:04 It reminds us of being cuddled and safety and comfort and-

Simon Sinek 20:08 And cookies

Dawn Goldworm 20:08 ... and joy and cookies and mommy and all the good things.

Simon Sinek 20:12 That's so good. So, so-

Dawn Goldworm 20:13 You know what the bad smell is?

Simon Sinek 20:15 I don't.

Dawn Goldworm 20:15 [laughs] Do you wanna know?

Simon Sinek 20:17 But I, I mean, it's gotta be, it's gotta be something putrid.

Dawn Goldworm 20:19 Like what?

Simon Sinek 20:20 I mean the most putrid thing I can think of. I mean, like, the, the, the list of putrid would be, like, sewage, rotting things, rotting meat, things like that. Like, like-

Dawn Goldworm 20:32 Well, if you work in a meat factory, it's not gonna be a bad smell for you. You're conditioned.

Simon Sinek 20:35 That's true.

Dawn Goldworm 20:35 If you work in the sewers in India, for instance, there's a whole case of people that do, caste, excuse me, of people that do. It's their daily lives. Remember, this is all conditioning.

Simon Sinek 20:44 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 20:44 So there's one smell that everyone has to have the same visceral reaction to.

Simon Sinek 20:47 Which is?

Dawn Goldworm 20:48 The smell of a decaying body.

Simon Sinek 20:51 The smell of a decaying body?

Dawn Goldworm 20:52 Body, human.

Simon Sinek 20:53 Oh, human.

Dawn Goldworm 20:54 Just a human.

Simon Sinek 20:54 And a human decaying body smells different than a dying cow, than a dead cow?

Dawn Goldworm 20:57 Yes.

Simon Sinek 20:58 I guess that makes sense because-

Dawn Goldworm 20:59 Well, we eat dead cow, don't we? [laughs]

Simon Sinek 21:01 We eat dead cow. But I get it, because the things that make up a cow are different than the things that make up a person. Wow. So that is, that is a-

Dawn Goldworm 21:06 It's true

Simon Sinek 21:06 ... that is a, a, u- universally, people love vanilla and hate the smell of a, a dead-

Dawn Goldworm 21:10 A decaying body

Simon Sinek 21:11 ... a human body.

Dawn Goldworm 21:12 And so the Defense Department trains people against the smell of a decaying body so they don't freak out once they start, uh, once they go into war or into battle.

Simon Sinek 21:21 Because it's so horrible.

Dawn Goldworm 21:22 Because it's so bad, and they can't have them, like, all of the sudden, all of, you know, the army or the navy or the SEALs or whoever it is, you know, starting to have this visceral reaction and getting sick.

Simon Sinek 21:31 No, okay.

Dawn Goldworm 21:32 They need to just go right through it, and so they get trained olfactively. They also use it as a weapon of war. They just spray it. They train people-

Simon Sinek 21:38 But this goes back to the, what is it, World War I, wasn't it?

Dawn Goldworm 21:41 1940s, World War II.

Simon Sinek 21:42 Oh, no, World War II?

Dawn Goldworm 21:43 Yeah, but you know when-

Simon Sinek 21:44 Isn't this where stink bombs, the concept of a stink bomb came from?

Dawn Goldworm 21:46 It's exactly where it comes from. So the US government thought that they were clever at the time and made this smell of defecation, the smell of poop.

Simon Sinek 21:52 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 21:52 And they thought if they sprayed it, and I think it was on the French, the, that's at least what I read, that, um, that the French soldiers would just, like, get scared and run away.

Simon Sinek 22:00 And start vomiting.

Dawn Goldworm 22:00 And the French were like, "It's just the smell of poop. Like, grow up, you know? [laughs] Grow up, Americans." Nothing happened. And so then they got more sophisticated, and they did some research, and, and now there's real olfactive weapons that smell like the-

Simon Sinek 22:12 That just make people-

Dawn Goldworm 22:13 ... the decaying body

Simon Sinek 22:13 ... that make people feel sick.

Dawn Goldworm 22:15 Disoriented, because you get disoriented. You have a really visceral reaction to it. You don't know what to do, 'cause you wanna get as far away from it as possible.

Simon Sinek 22:20 I mean, it's like, I mean, a stink, I've smelled... I mean, we used stink bombs when we were kids. Not me, of course, but I was around them.

Dawn Goldworm 22:25 Of course you didn't.

Simon Sinek 22:25 Um, no, I actually was a goody-goody.

Dawn Goldworm 22:27 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 22:27 That actually is not an exa- that's actually not sarcasm. [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 22:31 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 22:31 Actually. But I have been around them. And, uh, and it's, it's rotten eggs. You know, the s- the traditional-

Dawn Goldworm 22:37 Sure

Simon Sinek 22:37 ... child stink bomb is rotten eggs, and it's gross.

Dawn Goldworm 22:39 Well, in the United-

Simon Sinek 22:40 And it makes you run in the opposite direction 'cause it smells gross.

Dawn Goldworm 22:42 But in, in Greece, there's whole islands of Greece that smell sulfuric.

Simon Sinek 22:46 Right, which they li-

Dawn Goldworm 22:46 And they don't think anything of it. And they take the food, and they bake it in the sand, which by the way, if you've never done it, is so good. The vegetables come out so delightful. But it smells like sulfur, and no one thinks anything of it.

Simon Sinek 22:58 I have to tell you a funny smell story. So when I was a kid, I lived in Hong Kong, and, um, I used to collect stickers, and I, my sister and I had a bunk bed, and I had the bottom bed. And so the whole inside of my bed, my, was my sticker collection. So I would stick my stickers all inside my bed. And I had some scratch-and-sniff stickers. People would give me stickers, and I would put them randomly. And somebody gave me skunk scratch-and-stiff, scratch-and-sniff stickers, and I, the space that I had was, like, right by where my face was. And I'd never smelled a skunk my whole life because at the age, uh, I'd never lived anywhere where skunks existed.

Dawn Goldworm 23:31 Hmm.

Simon Sinek 23:31 There's no skunks in Hong Kong. And-

Dawn Goldworm 23:33 There's no skunks in Hong Kong?

Simon Sinek 23:34 I don't think so, at least there weren't back then.

Dawn Goldworm 23:36 Fascinating.

Simon Sinek 23:36 I'd, so I'd never, so I'm nine or 10 years old, and I'd never smelled a skunk in my whole life. So I have no idea if this sticker is accurate or not accurate, right?

Dawn Goldworm 23:44 Okay.

Simon Sinek 23:44 So I, as a child, would scratch the sticker and fall asleep next to the skunk sticker, and that's it. Then I moved to America. We moved to America when, when we were, when I was 10, and living in suburban New Jersey, for the first time in my life, I smelled a skunk. And everybody else was holding their nose, and, and it was, found it putrid, and I thought it was- Delightful

Dawn Goldworm 24:06 You bet it was great 'cause-

Simon Sinek 24:07 And-

Dawn Goldworm 24:07 ... it's the smell of childhood

Simon Sinek 24:08 And it was, it was a beautiful memory of me lying in my bunk bed in Hong Kong. And to this day, the smell of a skunk, not only does it not bother me, I find it quite sweet, actually.

Dawn Goldworm 24:17 See?

Simon Sinek 24:18 And so it's all cultural.

Dawn Goldworm 24:19 It's all, cultural, generational, 'cause you had scratch-and-sniff stickers-

Simon Sinek 24:22 I had scratch-and-sniff stickers, right

Dawn Goldworm 24:22 ... which don't really exist anymore. And, um-

Simon Sinek 24:25 So by the way, the sticker was exactly-

Dawn Goldworm 24:28 The smell of a skunk [laughs]

Simon Sinek 24:29 ... the smell of a skunk. It was exactly correct.

Dawn Goldworm 24:31 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 24:31 It's the exact smell.

Dawn Goldworm 24:32 Right. Exactly.

Simon Sinek 24:34 That's so funny.

Dawn Goldworm 24:34 And, and, and, um, it's also based on your living environment. So if you live in an urban or a, a rural-

Simon Sinek 24:40 Right

Dawn Goldworm 24:41 ... living environment. So like the smell of cow, for instance, cow dung. If someone lives in a rural environment, they don't think anything of it. And so if they would go to Central Park, for instance, and they would smell horse dung or horse manure, they're like, "Ah," and, "Smell of my childhood."

Simon Sinek 24:53 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 24:54 But other people are like, "Oh my God, what's that smell?" And they look all over their nose.

Simon Sinek 24:56 Whereas as a New Yorker, the smell of garbage I find under, n- unoffensive, but the smell of cows, absolutely awful.

Dawn Goldworm 25:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 25:04 [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 25:05 Exactly. So it's the same.

Simon Sinek 25:07 Got it. Got it.

Dawn Goldworm 25:07 It's all culturally appropriate except for those two smells on either end.

Simon Sinek 25:10 Except, except... That's so interesting. So if you wanna give a gift to somebody who lives in a foreign land, a candle, for example, if you wanna say, "Thank you for letting me stay at your house," make sure to buy vanilla. You're more likely to get warmth, gratitude if you give them vanilla.

Dawn Goldworm 25:22 Yes.

Simon Sinek 25:23 As opposed to you guessing, "Oh, I'm gonna give them this lavender one. It's nice and relaxing." And they might find it-

Dawn Goldworm 25:28 They might-

Simon Sinek 25:28 ... boring

Dawn Goldworm 25:28 ... or they just don't understand the smell.

Simon Sinek 25:30 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 25:30 And that's the interesting thing with smell. So if you don't have an experience with smell the first 10 years of your life, and then you smell it later in life, you'll automatically reject it, 'cause you don't have an emotional reaction for it. So you just push it away.

Simon Sinek 25:41 No kidding.

Dawn Goldworm 25:41 And so the way we create signature in smell is we... Well, the way I say it is we create like this, um, hallway.

Simon Sinek 25:48 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 25:48 The signature is at the end, and I create all these little doors for-

Simon Sinek 25:51 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 25:51 ... different cultures and generations, and people to walk through so they feel safe because they know that smell. And so they can walk down the hall and get to the actual signature of the scent, which is where the emotion is and where the loyalty is.

Simon Sinek 26:01 I wanna talk more about the brands you've worked with. I know you can't talk about

Simon Sinek 26:04 all of them 'cause your current contract, you're not allowed to.

Dawn Goldworm 26:06 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 26:06 But let's just say that there's some brands that have some amazing smells in their facilities and stores and places that we go, and we have magical experiences because of these smells, but you can't talk about it. I get that. What are some of the ones you can talk about?

Dawn Goldworm 26:20 What can I talk about?

Simon Sinek 26:21 Like what, what are some of the brands you've worked with where you've... Like, I know you've worked with cars. What did you do for Ferrari or Porsche?

Dawn Goldworm 26:27 Um, what did we do? Ferrari, we scented some of their showrooms for some of the new cars that were launched. Oh, Porsche was interesting. So Porsche, when they launched the Macan, they launched it in the Middle East. I think the first launch was in Dubai, and then it was in Qatar, then Abu Dhabi, and then it went to other, uh, countries in the Middle East. And so they wanted to create the scent of the Macan for these launches. Why it was so interesting was not... Well, I mean, we'd done that before for other brands, not just car brands, but other brands all over the world. But the Middle East, everyone's fully scented. People smoke out their clothing. They oil their hair. They apply oil to their skin and perfume on top of that to your skin. So they are a walking full fragrance.

Simon Sinek 27:06 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 27:07 Let's say you have hundreds of men in a room for the launch of a car, and we have to scent that room. How are we gonna work with all that smell that's already in the air? Versus Americans, who unfortunately a lot of us don't wear perfume. It's much easier to scent an environment here.

Simon Sinek 27:20 'Cause we're not, 'cause we have a little, one little spritz and off we go.

Dawn Goldworm 27:22 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 27:23 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 27:23 Well, we're fully scented. I mean, our toothpaste, our shampoo-

Simon Sinek 27:25 Oh, yeah

Dawn Goldworm 27:26 ... our body lotion, our laundry detergent, our shoes. I mean, we're fully scented anyway.

Simon Sinek 27:29 Oh, yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 27:29 But we don't give off as many of those vital molecules, whereas in the Middle East, they really want you to smell them from a distance. It's their way of recognizing each other, too. The women, depending on the country, you know, they wear burkas, but some of them wear the full face-

Simon Sinek 27:42 Sure

Dawn Goldworm 27:42 ... um, covering as well. And the way they can tell who their wife is is by her perfume.

Simon Sinek 27:46 Oh.

Dawn Goldworm 27:46 So everyone's fully scented, and so how do you scent an environment that's already fully scented?

Simon Sinek 27:50 That's, that's already scented.

Dawn Goldworm 27:50 And so, um, the brief came out of the UK, and I said, "Well, do you want it to smell English? Do you want it to smell Western?"

Simon Sinek 27:57 To keep, to keep using it, yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 27:58 Do you want the... And they said, and I said, "That's the only way it's gonna stick out in this overly scented environment." And so we made a Western smell for these-

Simon Sinek 28:05 Oh, oh, because it'd be unfamiliar

Dawn Goldworm 28:05 ... for the Middle East, yeah.

Simon Sinek 28:07 Oh, very good.

Dawn Goldworm 28:08 Interesting, right?

Simon Sinek 28:08 What, what went into that smell? What notes?

Dawn Goldworm 28:10 We used a lot of clean wood notes. I remember we used a very clean cedar wood. You can have more of a smoky cedar wood if it's from, um, Morocco, or you can have a cleaner cedar wood if it's from the US, from Virginia. We used a very clean cedar wood, a very clean sandalwood from Australia. Um, we used a lot of citrus notes, really bright, juicy citrus notes, which is very Western in a perfume.

Simon Sinek 28:30 Oh.

Dawn Goldworm 28:30 And, um, and then very aromatic European feeling.

Simon Sinek 28:32 So in a room, in a, in a room that smelled of the Arab world, this Western car stood out.

Dawn Goldworm 28:37 Right.

Simon Sinek 28:37 So interesting. So interesting. Do you smell, do you scent stores?

Dawn Goldworm 28:42 Uh, we scent Valentino stores.

Simon Sinek 28:44 So if I go into Valentino, it is scented to smell of Valentino.

Dawn Goldworm 28:47 Right.

Simon Sinek 28:47 And you design that?

Dawn Goldworm 28:48 So the Valentino scent-

Simon Sinek 28:49 So cool

Dawn Goldworm 28:49 ... is based on the history of Rome, which is based on a lot of religion, Catholicism, based on blood. It's based on sensuality. It's based on death and life and everything in between. I mean, it's the history of Rome.

Simon Sinek 29:00 And just a dash of chaos.

Dawn Goldworm 29:01 And just a dash of chaos, exactly, but the beauty of it all. You're walking through Rome, and you look down, and the streets are dirty, and it's all cobblestone. And then you look up, and you literally think you're looking at heaven, with all the gold in the sky and how much people revered God. And so that contrast is in the scent. It's the beauty of the scent of Valentino. We did it with, at the time, with Pierpaolo and Maria Grazia. Maria Grazia is now at Dior, and Pierpaolo has left Valentino.

Simon Sinek 29:24 Is that a person?

Dawn Goldworm 29:24 Yeah, these were the creative directors.

Simon Sinek 29:26 Okay. [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 29:26 [laughs] For anyone that listens that's in fashion. And their vision for Valentino was the, the future of Valentino because Mr. Valentino had just left, and they really wanted it based on the history of Rome.

Simon Sinek 29:36 That's cool.

Dawn Goldworm 29:36 It was super fun going through the archives and understanding the history of Valentino and then, of course, digging into the religious and social history of Rome.

Simon Sinek 29:43 And this is pumped through the air-conditioning?

Dawn Goldworm 29:45 Yes.

Simon Sinek 29:46 Okay. Changing tacks. I haven't opened this little magical book of mine in quite a long time, and it is perhaps the favorite book that I've ever written. So it was written at a time where, um, I was sort of getting frustrated that the world was getting more digital and analog was getting left behind. And I wanted to make something that could, could only exist in the analog world Um, in other words, it had to be real. So there's no digital version of this book. There's no audio of this book.

Dawn Goldworm 30:18 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 30:18 It was inspired by children's books. I remember spending lots and lots of time in the children book section of bookstores reading tons of little children's books.

Dawn Goldworm 30:24 So-

Simon Sinek 30:24 And so this book is, is for adults technically, but it is, it is designed to, uh, look like a children's book. And then, and when I met you and I said I wanna design a scent, what is more analog that I cannot recreate digitally or audio-ly [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 30:40 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 30:40 Uh, than, than scent. And so in this magical, magical little book, uh, the, there's a scented page. And I know you created a technology for me where I... It's not scratch and sniff, it's rub and sniff.

Dawn Goldworm 30:52 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 30:52 So I just gently rub my fingers over the page, and this l- And for those who are listening, this technology is amazing. It lasts for 10 years.

Dawn Goldworm 30:59 Right.

Simon Sinek 31:00 Now, I remember we had a long, you had a long conversation with me. You interviewed me and asked me a lot of questions, and from those questions you were able to discern the notes and cor- and accords that would make me, make the smell of optimism.

Dawn Goldworm 31:15 Yes.

Simon Sinek 31:15 Can you tell me what is in here and how you f- how you got to those?

Dawn Goldworm 31:20 Sure. So if you remember the first question-

Simon Sinek 31:22 I don't remember

Dawn Goldworm 31:22 ... I asked you. Yeah.

Simon Sinek 31:23 [laughs] It was many years ago.

Dawn Goldworm 31:25 So the first question I asked you is what is your color?

Simon Sinek 31:27 Right. Orange.

Dawn Goldworm 31:28 Right. Which is exactly what you said at the time. I said, "Well, why is it orange?"

Simon Sinek 31:32 It's, it's the color of optimism.

Dawn Goldworm 31:33 Right. It's bright, it's confident.

Simon Sinek 31:35 Bright, it's confident. It's-

Dawn Goldworm 31:36 It's the smell

Simon Sinek 31:36 ... fun

Dawn Goldworm 31:36 ... it's the color. Right. And so based on that... So I did global research on color and smell. And what I found when I gave people a color board and gave them different ingredients or accords or finished fragrances is that everyone with about 97% accuracy smells the same colors. If you give them, uh, a color board, they will all choose. They will all pick out the same color.

Simon Sinek 31:56 So if you give somebody a scent, most people-

Dawn Goldworm 32:00 97%, 98%

Simon Sinek 32:00 ... 97% will perceive the same color-

Dawn Goldworm 32:03 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 32:04 ... of that scent.

Dawn Goldworm 32:05 In the whole world. So there's no-

Simon Sinek 32:06 In the whole world

Dawn Goldworm 32:07 ... there's no cultural conditioning, generational conditioning-

Simon Sinek 32:09 Wow

Dawn Goldworm 32:09 ... living environment here.

Simon Sinek 32:10 So give me an example. So if I smell, uh... I mean, I'm gonna... If I smell a lemon I'm gonna say yellow. But, uh-

Dawn Goldworm 32:16 Yes

Simon Sinek 32:16 ... if I smell, um... Give me an example of a-

Dawn Goldworm 32:19 Galbanum.

Simon Sinek 32:19 What?

Dawn Goldworm 32:20 You have no idea what galbanum is?

Simon Sinek 32:21 No.

Dawn Goldworm 32:21 It's a resin that comes from a tree. Everyone smells green.

Simon Sinek 32:24 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 32:24 Dark green with a little bit of brown, black, and maybe a touch of yellow or red if your nose is really good at discerning the, uh-

Simon Sinek 32:29 Okay, give me another one-

Dawn Goldworm 32:30 ... chemical components

Simon Sinek 32:30 ... that I actually know what that is.

Dawn Goldworm 32:31 Sandalwood.

Simon Sinek 32:32 Sandalwood. Can I recall the smell of sandalwood? Sandalwood is brownish yellow.

Dawn Goldworm 32:40 It's kind of a light brown cream color, yeah. Vanilla?

Simon Sinek 32:44 Oh, that's, uh, cream-colored.

Dawn Goldworm 32:46 Right. But vanilla itself is brown.

Simon Sinek 32:49 That's true. Vanilla is brown.

Dawn Goldworm 32:50 But everyone does it as a creamy white. Yes.

Simon Sinek 32:53 Huh.

Dawn Goldworm 32:54 And so this happens with all ingredients, all accords, all smells for everyone all over the world. And so what's interesting about that, brands first and foremost identify with color. And so the first question I asked you is-

Simon Sinek 33:05 Ah

Dawn Goldworm 33:05 ... what's the color of your brand?

Simon Sinek 33:06 So you're back pedaling. When you take the color, you can get to the smell. So when I said orange, you're like, "Okay, I can... So this smells like-"

Dawn Goldworm 33:14 The top notes.

Simon Sinek 33:15 "... not oranges, but it smells like the color orange."

Dawn Goldworm 33:17 The top notes smell like the color orange.

Simon Sinek 33:18 Okay. Keep going. So what else, what else did you make? How did you make this?

Dawn Goldworm 33:21 So the next question was what is the texture of your brand?

Simon Sinek 33:24 Uh, smooth.

Dawn Goldworm 33:25 Right. So what you said was the, um... You said Mac at the time. A new Mac. The brushed steel of a new Mac. And you said, um, worn-in leather. It was a contrasting.

Simon Sinek 33:35 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 33:35 You wanted the smooth comfort of worn-in leather, but with the, the smoothness-

Simon Sinek 33:38 That sounds about right

Dawn Goldworm 33:39 ... of the new Mac. Yeah. So that was your texture.

Simon Sinek 33:40 I forgot to mention that I made the cover of this, um, soft to the touch-

Dawn Goldworm 33:43 Ah, soft touch

Simon Sinek 33:44 ... so it feels like skin.

Dawn Goldworm 33:45 Yeah, it's soft touch.

Simon Sinek 33:45 Because I want it to be human. I forgot that. So go on.

Dawn Goldworm 33:47 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 33:47 Sorry. Back to my self-indulgence.

Dawn Goldworm 33:48 Um-

Simon Sinek 33:49 So how did you come up with this?

Dawn Goldworm 33:49 So your self-indulgence. So your shape. I asked you what your shape was. You said it was a handwritten circle. S- the size-

Simon Sinek 33:55 Hand-drawn circle

Dawn Goldworm 33:55 ... hand-d- Exactly, yes. Hand-drawn circle the size of a grapefruit. I said, "Great." So when you design fragrance-

Simon Sinek 34:00 [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 34:00 ... you can design it in a shape. Is it round? Is it square? Is it triangular?

Simon Sinek 34:04 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 34:04 It depends on how the molecules move, right?

Simon Sinek 34:06 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 34:06 So I wanted them to move in a circle. So if you notice with your scent, you go deeper and deeper into it, but you're always going back and back and back to the same signature. It doesn't delineate like some perfumes do, like a triangle would.

Simon Sinek 34:16 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 34:17 So that's the shape. Um, and then of course the emotion was optimism.

Simon Sinek 34:22 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 34:22 So the scent has to evoke that sense of inspiration and confidence, strength, brightness, freshness, um, feeling of potential and hope. And so that's what the scent does. And then I asked you to go back into olfactive memories, which I only do with people-

Simon Sinek 34:37 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 34:37 ... and I, not brands. 'Cause... And w- I don't ask brands what they think about smell 'cause it's irrelevant-

Simon Sinek 34:42 Right

Dawn Goldworm 34:42 ... 'cause they're not their target. But you are your target.

Simon Sinek 34:44 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 34:45 So I said, you know, "Give me some olfactive memories that have deep meaning for you." And you said the smell of a fire after it's gone out from a fireplace. And so what we started with is we created the accord of the smell of a fireplace after it had been blown out and what that smells like, and then we built layers around the scent of all those other things that I just mentioned-

Simon Sinek 35:04 'Cause it does get-

Dawn Goldworm 35:05 ... and then more

Simon Sinek 35:05 ... it's, it is dark and it is... What have you, I think the way you described it was light and dark-

Dawn Goldworm 35:09 Yes

Simon Sinek 35:09 ... combined.

Dawn Goldworm 35:10 The middle is very dark, but dark in the most comforting feeling of safety and warmth. And there's something in it that you're like, "I know this. I know it." You know? And it makes you feel confident.

Simon Sinek 35:22 Why don't more companies do this? 'Cause it seems it, the power of scent smell to create loyalty and memory, it seems that this should be a standard thing. Like, everybody, every company starts and says, "We need a logo." Right?

Dawn Goldworm 35:34 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 35:35 And by the way, for good reason. And company's like, "We need, we need our company colors." For good reason. Some go as deep as having their own font. You know?

Dawn Goldworm 35:43 Or their own sound.

Simon Sinek 35:44 Or their own sound. Right. They have jingles.

Dawn Goldworm 35:46 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 35:46 Uh, Apple, Microsoft, they spend a fortune of money to make that chime. When you turn on the Macintosh you, it's always you know that Macintosh, that Apple sound every time you hear that chime, and it's changed over the years.

Dawn Goldworm 35:58 Yes.

Simon Sinek 35:58 Um, why is it that more companies don't do smell considering that it is way more powerful for connecting the brand to the person and to the memories that they have and the experiences they have? It seems like this should be basic. There should be, there should be thousands of companies like yours doing this work, but there aren't. There's only a precious few.

Dawn Goldworm 36:21 Well, the first reason is, is your sense of smell is fully developed before you're born. It's actually fully developed at about 16 weeks inside of your mother, and that's the beginning of your taste preferences because odor is the only thing that passes through the amniotic fluid. So-

Simon Sinek 36:33 Hmm

Dawn Goldworm 36:33 ... once you're born, your whole world is smell and emotion, and your other senses try to catch up, right? Now they are catching up. Your ability to talk about them is also growing, and so they're connected. So your sense of sight, you have a language for sight. You have a language for hearing. You have a language for, for, um, taste. You have a language for touch. You have no language for smell. Smell and language are not connected in the brain. And so when brands dist- say that they want to, uh, communicate, identify, differentiate themselves against other brands or for the world, they never think about smell.

Simon Sinek 37:07 They go rational.

Dawn Goldworm 37:07 And when you tell them-

Simon Sinek 37:08 They go rational

Dawn Goldworm 37:09 ... they go rational.

Simon Sinek 37:09 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 37:09 And when you tell them how powerful smell is, and sometimes I show them if I'm, if I am sitting with them, but, you know, I haven't sat with every brand, and I don't wanna say it's divided by the sexes, but it-

Simon Sinek 37:20 It's divided by the sexes

Dawn Goldworm 37:20 ... in general is.

Simon Sinek 37:22 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 37:22 Women are very comfortable tapping into their intuition and into their emotion.

Simon Sinek 37:26 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 37:26 Something that they naturally do.

Simon Sinek 37:28 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 37:28 So if you tell a woman smell's important, she's like, "I know it is. I have children," or, "I was a child," or this or that, and they tell you all these ex- You tell a man-

Simon Sinek 37:34 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 37:35 ... and he's like, "I don't know what you're talking about. Smell doesn't even matter to me. I don't wear perfume." I'm like, "I can smell everything about you right now. I can tell you if you brushed your teeth or not. I can tell you if you put gel in your hair. I can tell you what laundry detergent you're using. You are fully scented and you don't even know it. Just because you don't spray a hydroalcoholic fine fragrance on your skin doesn't mean you're not wearing perfume." And they're like, "Oh." I was like, "What about the smell of your shoes? You like that smell? What about the smell of your dog, the smell of your kids? Those smells are fundamental emotional moments in your life that make you feel like you're grounded. Why wouldn't you do that with your brand?" And most of these boardrooms are full of men.

Simon Sinek 38:10 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 38:10 And like, "That's the last thing we need is an emotional touchpoint for a brand."

Simon Sinek 38:14 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 38:14 "We just need people to spend more money."

Simon Sinek 38:16 Yeah. By the way, that's the same in my work-

Dawn Goldworm 38:18 Mm

Simon Sinek 38:18 ... which is women intuitively understand my work better than men. I, I explain my work, whether it's why or one of the other concepts, and peop- and women go, "Yep, got it." And men go, "Can I see the case study?"

Dawn Goldworm 38:27 Right. Exactly.

Simon Sinek 38:29 What's, what's one brand you would love to scent that you never have?

Dawn Goldworm 38:35 Are you-

Simon Sinek 38:35 Or one kind of brand. One, it may be, it may be a category, like a product category.

Dawn Goldworm 38:40 So, hmm, that's a good question.

Simon Sinek 38:43 You've done fashion.

Dawn Goldworm 38:44 I've done everything.

Simon Sinek 38:44 You've done sports. You've done cars.

Dawn Goldworm 38:46 I've done banking.

Simon Sinek 38:47 Banking.

Dawn Goldworm 38:48 Cruise ships.

Simon Sinek 38:49 Cruise ships. I mean, you've done a lot of things. Like, what's, what's a category that y- that you think would be really fun to scent that you haven't?

Dawn Goldworm 38:57 I would like, and this sounds like a kind of a general answer.

Simon Sinek 38:59 We'll talk about the bank in a minute. [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 39:01 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 39:02 I just heard you say bank. It's like the scent of a bank?

Dawn Goldworm 39:04 Yeah, I've worked with a lot of banks.

Simon Sinek 39:05 I can tell you what the scent is. Get me out of here, that's the scent.

Dawn Goldworm 39:07 You know, we did a head space of money once. You know what a head space is?

Simon Sinek 39:10 No.

Dawn Goldworm 39:11 So a head space is technology. It used to be done with, um, a glass, what looked like a bell. Um, now we have special plastic for it. But essentially you put like a glass bell on top of an object. Let's say, let's for fragrance terms, we say put it on top of a rose. And what we do is then we put a, um, a needle inside that records the volatile molecules around the rose. So essentially what your nose-

Simon Sinek 39:33 Like the box of sneakers, the smell inside the-

Dawn Goldworm 39:34 Yes

Simon Sinek 39:35 ... what smells by the bell

Dawn Goldworm 39:35 ... it knows what smell.

Simon Sinek 39:36 Right.

Dawn Goldworm 39:36 And then we take the needle back to a lab and we synthetically reconstitute it. So we did that with money. We did it with a dollar bill 'cause we wanted to see what would come off of a dollar bill. And if you think about money and doing a head space of money, what would it smell like? It would smell-

Simon Sinek 39:48 Like money.

Dawn Goldworm 39:49 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 39:49 I mean, a new dollar bill has a smell.

Dawn Goldworm 39:51 Right. It'd smell like ink.

Simon Sinek 39:52 Ink and paper, yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 39:53 Right, right. It actually smelled [laughs] it smelled like, uh, marijuana, cocaine, um, human sweat, and a little bit of ink and paper.

Simon Sinek 40:01 So, so it smells like investment banker.

Dawn Goldworm 40:05 Ba-dum-bum. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 40:07 No, no, it wasn't a joke. [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 40:09 [laughs] Yeah. So-

Simon Sinek 40:11 I do appreciate that investment bankers and money smell the same.

Dawn Goldworm 40:14 Uh, potentially they do.

Simon Sinek 40:15 [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 40:15 I haven't done the research on that, but I'll let you know. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 40:18 [laughs]

Dawn Goldworm 40:19 Um, I would like to create a smell, regardless of the industry or application, that allows people to feel joy. I think, not to get too serious, but the state of the world is in a conundrum.

Simon Sinek 40:30 Hmm.

Dawn Goldworm 40:30 People are feeling very unsafe.

Simon Sinek 40:31 Hmm.

Dawn Goldworm 40:31 They're looking for comfort. They're looking for safety. They're looking for simplicity.

Simon Sinek 40:35 Hmm.

Dawn Goldworm 40:35 And I think we have simple moments of joy in our everyday life, and I'd like to recreate those with people so they can find that safety when, um, when they're looking at the state of the world and not really knowing what the answer is, and how can they take that anxiety and bring it back to a form of nourishment and comfort. Take their garbage and make it into flowers. I would like to help them do that.

Simon Sinek 40:54 Or make a candle of that, please.

Dawn Goldworm 40:55 Yeah, I'm working on it.

Simon Sinek 40:56 Ha- have you scented like a children's wing of a hospital?

Dawn Goldworm 40:58 So we have talked about it. This was pre-COVID.

Simon Sinek 41:01 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 41:01 Um, and since COVID, the hospital systems in general are a little bit overrun and overloaded, and we haven't been able to roll it out, but we did do a children's book in lieu of that-

Simon Sinek 41:10 Yeah

Dawn Goldworm 41:10 ... um, as you know very well.

Simon Sinek 41:11 I know. It's, it's a cool scent of a rainbow.

Dawn Goldworm 41:13 And, um, and children love it, and it essentially, it's about, you know, the color research I was talking about.

Simon Sinek 41:18 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 41:18 So it allows children to understand, um, smell, emotion, and color from a very early age.

Simon Sinek 41:23 Yeah.

Dawn Goldworm 41:23 And kids love it. And we made it so they could put it in their mouths and, and, um, it's their favorite book that often falls apart because they wanna read it every night. And I get so many videos from kids from a very young age to six years old reading this book, and it bringing them so much joy. They have those little children giggles-

Simon Sinek 41:39 Hmm

Dawn Goldworm 41:39 ... that we were talking about, and that makes my heart, like, burst. It doesn't matter how many cool luxury blah, blah, blah scents I've done, but a child reading a book and smiling because of, you know, something we created.

Simon Sinek 41:52 How that smells.

Dawn Goldworm 41:52 Ugh.

Simon Sinek 41:53 Magic.

Dawn Goldworm 41:53 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 41:53 Dawn, I hope that you make the smell of comfort and joy in this world that we are trying to make scents of, no pun intended.

Dawn Goldworm 42:01 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 42:03 Um, uh, thanks so much for coming on. Absolutely fascinating. So cool. And everyone should go check out your book, The Smell of a Rainbow.

Dawn Goldworm 42:11 Oui. Thank you.

Simon Sinek 42:12 Thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsinek.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.