The Lip Bar (TLB): Melissa Butler (2020)

Hey, before we start the show, a question for you. Let's say you post something on social media and you get lots of great comments and reviews, but There's one, just one that's negative or rubs you the wrong way. Do you ignore it or not? Does it stick with you, kind of gnaw at you? Well, I recently talked with actor Nathan Lane, who had a story just like this, where

One sentence in an article about him. really got on his nerves. And what happened next? change the entire trajectory of his act career. You can hear my conversation with Nathan Lane on my other podcast. It's called The Great Creators. Just search for The Great Creators with Guy Roz wherever you listen to podcasts or go to thegreatcreators.com. And now Onto today's show.

Hey everyone, so last year to mark the tenth anniversary of her beauty brand, the Lip Bar, Melissa Butler hung a billboard in her hometown of Detroit. And it said, Shark Tank told me to quit. Ten years And two million units sold.

Thanks, Mr Wonderful. We shared Melissa's amazing story a few years back, including that disastrous appearance on Shark Tank, so in case you missed it, or even if you heard it, We think you will love it. Enjoy. When people came to my house, like it was literally a lab. Like I definitely didn't have an apartment. You know, I've ruined stoves, I've lost security deposits. People would come over my house and want ice, and I have no ice because it's my my freezer is filled with lipstick molds. I'm like, oh if you want ice, you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't have ice, I have lipstick.

Ha ha Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today How Melissa Butler launched a lipstick brand at her kitchen stove and got it into hundreds of target stores.

All the while challenging an industry to change the way it thinks about color. and beauty. There are some industries that are really hard to break into if you're looking to start a business. For example. A car company.

Just think how hard that would be. Aside from lots of experience and engineering know how You need an insane amount of money just to get it off the ground. Which is why you don't see that many new car companies every year. Now, one day, it may very well be possible that someone will figure out how to make cars in a really cheap and cost-efficient way that could allow lots more entrepreneurs to enter that category. Which is essentially what happened to the cosmetics industry in the past two decades.

It used to be that getting into cosmetics required a lot of experience, a network of connections. And lots of money. But today, the barriers to entry are much lower. There are dozens of white label manufacturers all over the world that will happily make your product for a relatively small price. And it's meant that there's been an explosion of new cosmetics brands over the past decade.

Which makes sense because the global beauty industry is worth half a trillion dollars. Lipstick alone, it's a nine billion dollar global market. I mean There is a lot of money in beauty. And so to stand out. Brands really have to be about more than just the products.

Which is exactly how Melissa Butler thought about her brand. The lip bar. When she started making her own lipstick in her apartment, She knew she wanted something that not only challenged the idea of what beauty is, but But

How we define who it's meant to apply to. Melissa wanted to make lipstick that were bold and rash and vivid, in colours that, at the time, weren't widely available. Blacks and golds and purples and bright neon pinks.

Shades and colors that were expressive and strong and confident And most importantly Made for a whole category of women. who weren't being served by the market. Which happened to be Melissa's cohort.

black and brown women who didn't feel like there was a makeup brand made with them in mind. The story of how Melissa turned her kitchen stove project into a cosmetics brand, that's now in hundreds of target stores across the country. includes a cross country promotional tour and a retrofitted airport shuttle bus A disastrous appearance on Shark Tank.

And a decision to move the business from New York To her home town of Detroit. Where she grew up with her sister and her mom. in the nineteen nineties. My mom was a crane operator, which is really crazy to say right now because I'm thirty four and I've never ever met anyone else that was a crane operator, but basically she worked at a steel factory. You know, Detroit is automotive. So she was at a steel company that

created steel and and parts for the automotive industry. And so she would leave for work in the morning with a hard hat? Steel boots. Yeah, definitely steel toe boots that I would sometimes put on and they were heavy as hell that I would put on and like kinda wobble around the house with. And so she would go to work at eleven PM and and come home in the morning. And so I I used to look at it as a disadvantage that I was raised in a one parent household because You know, I everyone needs their dad and everyone needs both parents. You need that that nature and that nurture. You need that protector and that provider. You need your mom to be soft.

Or at least that's what I used to think. And as I've gotten older, I realize that It's probably one of my biggest advantages because watching my mom do something and work in an industry that is so male dominated. I think it was only her and her best friend, they were the only two women in that entire steel factory. She saw that that she had to live life for her and that no one was coming to save her. So she taught us very early that we had to save ourselves. So it was like she directionally ingrained this pathway for both me and my sister. Was your mom um was she pretty strict?

No. My mom wasn't strict at all. Like my mom was working. She was working all the time. I could have been a very wild kid, but I wasn't. Like I didn't sneak boys into the house. Like I remember growing up and like, you know, those curious teenage years where you're You may be interested in like drinking or maybe you want to smoke pot for the first time or even like sex. Like I I wasn't interested in any of it. And I I've never been a person to like study. I wouldn't I would never say that I was a good student, but I always got good grades. I don't I don't know Detroit super well. I've only been there briefly a couple times. Tell me about your neighborhood. Was it I mean, y your mom, I'm assuming was it like was a union was a union job and probably had a a pretty solidly middle class

income and and health insurance and those kinds of things that came with a job. Um what was your neighborhood like? Guy, my neighborhood was horrible, actually. Um and I'm from like one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Detroit. But I never felt Unsafe. And and even though we didn't have a lot, I never needed anything.

So like in high school, for instance, I was I was one of the quote unquote cool girls, like who had like the designer clothes, but that was really my mom. doing her best to to provide for her For us what she felt like would satisfy us.

And and now when I talked to her, I remember maybe a year ago. I was like, mom, we were living way beyond our meetings. And she's like, Yeah, but I I did it for you. Yeah. And I'm like, that was irresponsible. And and we we kinda laugh about it now. But she was like, I just want it you to be happy and I want it to to be able to provide for you the life that that I felt like you deserved. Okay, so you you did well at school. You you

Got good grades. Mm. And and I guess you were able to test into Pretty competitive public high school in Detroit called Cas Tech, right? Yeah. It's it's right near downtown and it's it's essentially a college prep school.

And It was probably 98%. Black students. Now it's a little bit more diverse because the city of Detroit is changing. So right now there's a lot more investment in the city, whereas you know, fifteen years ago no one was downtown Detroit. So when I went to Cas Tech, it was surrounded by by people who were either homeless or drug addicts So it's like this amazing school that's in the midst of all the blight.

So Detroit went through a really tough time and it hasn't been until maybe the last you know, ten years that it's it's experienced this renaissance. Do you remember as a like as a high school kid? Thinking. I I'm gonna get out of this place. Like I am going to

leave this place and I'm gonna Make money and I'm gonna do something really interesting with my life. Like do you remember having those thoughts? I don't. Um, I don't I don't think that I thought about

I I never thought That I need it to leave Detroit. Um even with me living in a nad so nice neighborhood. I didn't think that there was anything wrong with it. Hm.

I mean soon after you graduated, you you would wind up leaving Detroit. I I th uh in fact I mean you left Michigan, right? Yeah. Um, and I was like, Well, if I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna go away. And most of my really good friends actually stayed in Michigan, but I knew that I wanted to go to a to a HBCU. Yeah. That was a given. I knew that I wanted to be around black people and so I didn't want to go to what we call a PWI, which is a predominantly white institution, I knew that I didn't want to go to Michigan State or or Michigan because I wanted to

Have some pride and and really have the black experience. Right. So I guess you start off at Alabama State. Which is in Montgomery, Alabama, but but then you decided to transfer to to Florida to Florida A and M in Telassie. Yeah and they were both two really great HBCUs and they both had really good business programs. Like I knew that I wanted to get into business because in high school, um, I used to work at my cousin's clothing shop. So my cousin is my first exposure to

entrepreneurship. He had a store in the mall and He taught me everything about margin and pricing your product and hiring people. And he also gave me a lot of independent. And now that I say that, I think that was the theme of my childhood. Yeah. Having independent and and being given this room to be a free thinker and come up with with the answer for yourself because I'll never forget it was probably Christmas Eve and he allowed me to count all of the money that we made that day.

And it was the most money I had ever seen. It was insane. And I think I count it maybe like twelve thousand dollars and I was just like I'm that guy he's rich Yeah. And my entire goal for going to college wasn't necessarily because I wanted to get a higher education. I didn't really care about it that much. But I went to college because I was like, this is how I can make money. Hm. So so what was your plan? Like what how were you gonna do that?

So literally I switched my concentration and my focus to business finance. And that's where I stayed. And I was like, okay, well, if I'm gonna do this finance thing, I'm gonna go and work on Wall Street because you know, now I can be the wolf of Wall Street. Again, being being influenced by pop culture. So like I didn't know anything about it. Like again, my mom was a crane operator and I had a cousin who was an entrepreneur, but I didn't know that there were so many different paths to make money. Yeah. Okay, so you you wanted to get into finance, but but before you graduated, I read that you actually Spent some time in China, like uh like in Beijing? Yeah learning Mandarin. For six months. Oh wow. Wow and I had just been

really fascinated with China and This idea that China was about to be the next superpower. And I was like, that would make me valuable. If I wanted to learn about business, you know, if I'm this business girl, I should go to China and learn a little bit about their business. Yeah. But it was a complete culture shock. I mean, I I think I was sharing that literally my my entire life was black. Like I came from black Detroit, you know, I went to a black, all black high school in Detroit, I went to a black college, and now here I am the only black woman and I'm in the middle of Beijing. It was it was so odd. And I think they were also shocked, you know? Um people would come up to me and and touch my skin and Everyone automatically assumed that I was, you know, from an African country be because If you had black skin, then you were automatically from Africa. And if you were from America, then you were blonde hair with blue eyes. Right. I mean how would you like

It was life changing. Yeah. Oh my God, it was life changing. Like I understood, like how big and small the world was. I understood how a woman From Detroit.

Could have Such synergy and connection with a woman from Iceland. Like one of my really good friends who I met there, she was from Iceland. And like she was my best friend when I was in the program sort of thing. And we would just talk about a lot of the same things, even though we had a completely different life. And I think for the first time in my life, I understood that we were all human and it wasn't just Black, white Asian.

It was just humans. Wow. So you come back. to the US. And you decide to go Work on Wall Street.

for Barclays Bank. Mm-hmm. And When you got to New York, what what was that like? Was it exhilarating? Were you just like were you just kinda blown away by it or were you sort of was it un unnerving to be in this kind of corporate environment? What what was your What's your memory of

Starting out at Barclays as an analyst. I thought and I still think that New York is the most magical city on the planet. I was awe struck. And and I started very quickly meeting other people who like worked at JP Morgan Chase or worked at Goldman Sachs and and it was like a a whole world, but I remember you know, my first week being really excited and like expressing that I wanted to learn and like I wanted to learn as much as possible and I wanted to to to be good.

And like one of my managers was like Get over it, kid. They give shit bonuses. And I was like, wait, what? I didn't know what that that really meant. I didn't know what a good bonus was, what a bad bonus was. I just knew that he was unhappy. And a lot of my team members weren't were unhappy. So, um I think very quickly like I learned that I wasn't gonna learn that much, but then also that if I stayed there, that I would be in this environment where no one likes their job. And like from my perspective, I'm like Hell, I just got all these student loans. I had racked up like fifty thousand dollars. But also like I didn't do all that. I didn't go to college and

Get these student loans and go to China for six months to be in a career that I hate. And then from what you're telling me, isn't necessarily even a career path that's that's desirable anymore. So I was disheartened, if I'm gonna be honest. It was mostly white men, and you know, they would ask me questions about my hair because I was as a One of your superpowers is that you get to change your hair all the time and do whatever you want to do. And I was constantly like asked about your my hair or my clothes or if something happened in the media with a black person, and and this is oftentimes the the plight of a black person working in corporate America. You're never able to be an individual. Yeah. Like so every day I have had to answer for the entire black race and and it was exhausting. Oh, working at Barclays was exhausting. Fair enough. I mean It sounds like the most boring job on the planet, let's be honest. It is.

Fine does it sound so boring. I mean I know you make up tons of money if you stick with it, but my God. Yeah, it's not fun. Um so you're doing this. You're clearly this is not like what you want to devote your life to. But you need the job, you need the money, and you're kinda working and earning your paycheck. But I guess on the side you were kind of just looking for different creative outlets and and and I read that one of them was

Uh making soap. Yeah. So I had gotten really into um this soap that was sold at Whole Foods. It was so expensive. My mom thought that I was crazy'cause I try to call her, like, Mom, I found this soap. It was so cool. And she's like, What is it? I'm like, Well, first of all, it's expensive. It's like six dollars a bar. And she's like Six dollar soap. I grew up where my mom would buy like, you know, the the six pack or eight pack of like dove or dial and that whole thing was six dollars. She's like, You're buying one bar of soap for six dollars. She's like, I don't wanna know about it. So I'm buying these expensive soaps and as a hobby Because also I I'm now listening to my mom like wow, I am spending a lot of money on soap. And I'm like, Well If this soap is so great because it's natural and it's handmade, then why can't I make it?

So I first started making soap. For my own personal use. Hm. How did you and by the way, how you're just like going online and and looking up Like how to make soap? Yeah, there were there were tons of like forums. I took a soap making class. I'm buying all sorts of ingredients. I'm on YouTube learning how to make soap. I'm like reading books on soap making. Like I'm I'm literally going in. It's it's insane. How do you and by the way, and w what did you learn about how to make a bar of soap? Like um

Like g I'm assuming there's like glyc maybe glycerin or vegetable oil or like Um, I don't know, what yeah, wha what would you buy to and like It'll melt it down and like your Up stove on your stovetop, like in a pot of the melting. Basically in a pot with a Pyrex, like a double boiler. Oh right, okay. Um you could you could make soap with glycerin, which was more moisturizing. Yeah um, but I didn't think that it it cleansed you as well. So the old fashioned way of making soap, and this is the way that I typically made them was with lye. Oh. Which is dangerous.

Um and it can burn you. And I definitely got burnt yes. Yes. and and you had to handle it very carefully and then soap goes through a curing process. So it could take, you know, three months for your your soap to cure, or you can put it in the oven. To cure that soap. Wow. And then I came up with this idea because I was I was really getting into like the creative component of making the soap. So I was thinking like, okay, well, what are all the different flavors That I can make. Like I was making a strawberry bar and I put like dried strawberry in it, and I was like, uh, I don't think that's really clean or sanitary, because also. I'm not a chemist and I don't really know what I'm doing. And so when I'm coming up with these outlandish ideas, I don't have anyone to say like, hey, that's actually not good for pH balance or this is going to like

cause bacteria and mold to build. So I'm trying all these different soap recipes and I'm trying to make it look all cool and you know have a gradient with the soap bar, like creating ombre soap bars. Like I spent so much time making soap and honestly so much money. By the way, I I I have to confess it, sometimes when I'm at Whole Foods, And then buy that. soap area, you know, where they've got like those beautiful translucent bars of soap like with things like flowers or whatever suspended In the soap, I kinda wanna it it looks delicious. Like part of me wants to just take a big bite out of it sometimes. Right, I mean'cause like we did lush on the show. We we did the whole episode on Lush and uh

And that stuff looks is beautiful too. Like the you know, the sliced you know, loaf of soap that you can hear. I was obsessed with with lush. And lush is really like I actually don't think I've had this full circle moment, but in in my soap making, I was like, I wanna be lush. And I think that's what made me say like I wanna start a soap business actually because I was obsessed. Like this is it. I this is this is my way out. I'm gonna create a company. It's gonna be called the Soap Bar. I love it. Very creative soap bar.

I'm surprised that that name didn't exist, that it wasn't taken. Nope, it didn't exist and the concept was that all of the soaps would be named after Drinks. Right. So I have a margarita bar that was like lemon and lime basically with sea salt on top. So I had all these really fun ideas and all these grand plans and and ultimately one day I was calling a supplier and I was looking for, you know, more pigments for my soaps because I was trying to get really funky and fancy with my color. Yeah, well ombre colors are yeah, I mean that's very

Challenging. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a little work. It takes takes some time. And he's like, Wait, slow down, slow down. Do you want Lip gloss pigments or do you want silk pigments? And I was like Uh lipstick.

I knew nothing about lipstick, but I couldn't believe that I could buy lipstick pigments and that was it for me. Wait. You just call the supplier to ask for more pigments and they're like Lipstick or soap and you're like Wait. Lipstick. Yeah. And it was a split second. It it was so crazy because I paused. Yeah. Knowing good and well I was like looking for soap pigments. It was almost something that I felt like like I shouldn't have been doing. Like I shouldn't have access to it.

So when he said lipstick, I'm like I can make lipstick. Oh, I'm done with this soap business. When we come back in just a moment, how Melissa spend down all of her savings to launch a lipstick business. And why, after she's flat broke? She goes one step further.

And quits her day job. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. One more thing before we get back to the show, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. It's usually just at the top of the app. And it's Totally free. Hey, welcome back to how I built this from NPR.

I'm Guy Raz. So it's right around two thousand ten and Melissa had Just had one of those life changing phone calls with a supplier who asked just kind of randomly If she was looking to buy products to make soap Or lipstick. In in that moment?

She decided. Lipstick. For one thing, lipstick was actually one of the few kinds of makeup She wore. At the time I think that I was into

Reds, oranges, and purples. Oh yeah. Yeah and part of it Like part of the reason why when we launched the lip bar, we had such crazy colors is because I remember it being so difficult to find purple lipstick. Like I want it purple so bad, but it's like only a couple of brands salt purple at the time and it was hard to find and it was wasn't in stock and I'm like, why is it so difficult for me to like have this bit of self expression? And then I'm trying to think about like well what's the next step? Like then you're gonna get a

A box of just Powder, pigment powder. For lipstick, but How do you make lipstick? Like w where do we what do I go to learn about how to make a lipstick? Did you did you like go online and type in

Lipstick recipes? Yeah, pretty much. Um, I probably Google how to make lipstick. And there wasn't that much out there at the time, but I just started experimenting and I probably made, I don't know. a thousand batches of lipstick and none of them worked before I found one that was like it.

First of all, what do you melt together to just get the You know, the the base for lipstick. Well this is the way I've I've explained it. Like all lipstick is basically the same. It has its same like core ingredients. All of it has a wax, all of it has a oil, and all of it has a pigment. Now depending on the waxes, depending on the oils and the other Additions. that's going to impact the amount of color, that's gonna impact the texture, if it's soft, if it's creamy, um, if it's moisturizing, if it's long lasting. Now all of those other things are optional. Right. And then depending on the proportions, like that's gonna affect the texture. Like when you

Apply it to your lips how that is sort of spread onto the surface of your skin, right? Like A thinner coat or a thicker coat, things like that. Yeah, so If you have too much oil, it's gonna be soft and it's gonna feel luxurious on your lips, but that lipstick probably is gonna break. If you have too much wax, then it's not gonna spread on her lips.

In a nice silky and and creamy way. Um, if you don't have enough pigment, then you can have this beautiful color, like the actual lipstick could be a bright pink, but when you actually put it on your lip, no color shows up. So it has to be a really delicate balance of pigment, oil, and wax. It's like a really luxurious and expensive crayon. That's exactly what it is. And when you had all the ingredients and you started to like melt stuff together, what did you pour it in? A are there like I mean, can you just go online and get like lipstick molds? Uh yes and no.

So most companies, like the huge companies, the L'Oreals of the world, they pretty much had a monopoly on the molds market. So there was from my understanding, and this is in two thousand twelve, there were only a couple of suppliers in the US who made molds. And the biggest one was Kavala. And I was able to buy maybe four used molds and trust me, they were not cheap. I think I've spent like a whole paycheck on them. Like thousands of dollars? Yeah, the molds were maybe Fifteen hundred dollars apiece. What are they made out of? Like metal? Steel. So they were also very heavy.

So yeah, I probably bought maybe six or eight thousand dollars in molds, and how I bought them and how I had access to them is I found a lab that was going out of business. And I think they were in Louisiana and this guy was selling them and I found'em on Craigslist, I think. I'm trying to imagine you in your apartment, um, like after working on the weekends. melting down all this stuff and experimenting with different colors and pouring it carefully into the mold and probably getting like lipstick material all over your kitchen. Stressing out. It ruins Grout, like there have been so many times where

I ruined stoves, I've lost security deposits. When people came to my house, like it was literally a lab. Like I definitely have an apartment. Yeah. I had a lab. And so, you know, the whole table would be spread out with all of my different ingredients that I kept in these airtight jars. And after I made, like, let's say I melted down this perfect lipstick and I poured it into the mold. I really wanted it to the lipstick to cure, so I would put it in the freezer. So people would come over my house and want ice and I have no ice because my my freezer's filled with lipstick molds. I'm like, oh if you want ice you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't have ice, I have lipstick. And you are

Presumably working like sixty hour weeks at Barclays. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was so committed. I I started looking for suppliers in China for packaging. Right. I started like I would come home. I would maybe get home at You know, seven, eight PM and then I would stay up until three thirty. Wow. You know, working on the recipe. I have no idea how I functioned. And then I would get back up at seven and go to work. And did you tell anybody about it? Were you like talking to friends, like I'm making lipstick. I'm just really excited about this thing. Oh absolutely. They were all my first customers. Like every single time I made a product, like I never wanted to drink my own Kool-Aid. So I would invite people over to try on the product. Like people I met at work, anyone who would try it, honestly. I remember taking lipstick to work, actually. Like, hey, I made this. Can you try it out? And people were like

No, is it gonna break me out? You made it. No, I don't Does it How do you know it works? And I'm like, I don't. That's why I want you to try it out. We don't test on animals, just on uh just on Barclays and Blades. Yeah. We test on finance people. So um And you're kind of experimenting and teaching yourself again and again and At what point did you land on

So there's oil, there's wax, and there's color, right? And so those are the basic ingredients, but you wanna get a certain type of wax and a certain type of oil and a certain type of color, right? That speaks to you, so when did you know that you found that right formula. Yeah, I mean my parameters for me were they were just crystal clear. I was like it needs to be vegan. I don't want any animal products or any animal byproducts. And I want it to be as natural as possible without compromising the color. So I knew that I wanted to create wild and crazy colors, things that you really didn't see on the market at that time. And

I want it to feel good. So what's something that feels really good and creamy and I was like shea butter. I'll I'm gonna put shea butter on the lipstick. And that was that was it. Like I just started then looking for ways to source shea butter or coconut oil. And I think I tried a ton of different natural ingredients to add to, you know, that baseline formulation. But really, you know, I found out that it was working when people started saying like, hey, can I get a little bit more of that? And that was it. And did any of your like colleagues or

Or colleagues or friends. were they assuming that this is something that you might like Was that What they assumed were they even asking you what you were gonna do with this?

Um, I think I made it very clear that it was gonna be a website. And I don't think anyone took me serious until I got a shipment of our packaging. And here I am with Thirty boxes. thirty boxes. Like they're on the couch, they're on the floor, they're everywhere. And here I am just kind of waiting like You remember that company I said I was gonna start?

Yeah, it's in my living room. And and I think that's when they took me seriously. So you were presumably making putting them into The tubes. Inside the lipstick tubes. And you found a factory in China to to make that packaging?

I did, and the the inspiration behind the packaging because our packaging really stands out. It's really cool, it's intricately designed. And the inspiration was a bird cage. Like I love like the old school Victorian bird cages that are just like super intricate. I don't like the idea of birds in cages. No. But I I love the beautiful craftsmanship. And so I was like I want it to kinda look like that. I want I want something that doesn't look like a traditional tube because I'm building a non traditional company. And I had been asking a lot of friends like, you know, what do you think about makeup? And and oftentimes, especially for black women, what I found was They felt like beauty wasn't for them. That it was made for, not for their skin or their complexion. Yeah. Absolutely. That it wasn't for their complexion, that marketing didn't cater to them unless they were you know putting something in a brown bottle and then they're like, Hey, this is for black people. So here I am friends with a lot of Um

People who are now for the first time in their lives they have disposable income. you know,'cause we were all fresh out of college, basically, and and making a a pretty solid salary. And I was just like, there's a huge gap in terms of like what my generation wants and what's uh readily available on the market. I mean you look at your website today and clearly

your products and your brand Um they're designed for for every kind of person, every skin tone. every racial and ethnic background and group. When you were

initially coming up with the idea. Were you saying, you know T to your friends who you were kind of asking for feedback, where you s were you sort of saying, look, No one is is serving us.

You know, we are consumers and we spend a lot of money on fashion and beauty and we don't feel like products being made for us. And so I want to make products for us. Was that Was that how you thought about it initially?

Yeah, I think the goal was to create a brand where Black women could be the default. So We create products like you said.

for every single skin tone. But When we first launched in two thousand twelve, I was just like I don't want black and brown women to feel like they have to fit in. To the lit bar. I want them to know that they are the lit bar and they're not the default anywhere else, and my brand is gonna be where that starts.

Okay, so you come up with a really cool packaging design that that looks kinda like a a a bird cage. And you've got this factory in China that can make the boxes. Um Do you remember how many packages, like lipstick dispensers you had to order? Yeah, I think the minimum order quantity was 12,000 units. Wow, so you had 12,000 units like it stacked up in boxes in your kitchen. Yeah. And you had to pack each one by hand. You had to take the lip the actual lips. Every single one. So I hand poured it into the mole and our m my mold held I wanna say one hilt forty eight units and one hilt seventy two units. Oh this this yeah, this is this is serious. But I think I launched with twelve shades. And the goal would be to sell all of this in a year. Yeah. And and with the soap bar you were gonna name each soap like um the margarita or the lime ricky or the gin and tonic. Were you gonna do that with the lipsticks too? I did. And so we have Cosmo, you know, that was one of our our colors and Gin and Tonic is still one of our colors, actually. Um but we had things like Fuzzy Naval and all these like crazy names.

Sour Apple Martini, it was literally a green lipstick. Fuzzy Navel, I think was like a light orange, like coral lipstick. And because it had that bar tie-in, my concept was that whenever you bought a lipstick, you actu also got a recipe card for that drink. By the way Do you remember I mean, you must have I'm assuming you got twelve thousand These tubes, right, of the packaging. For the lipstick. You had to spend a lot of your money on this. Was any part of you nervous about doing that?

I spent not even just like a lot of money. I think I spent all of my money guy. I spent my entire savings, um Because the thing that I didn't take into consideration was you buy it, but then you also have to get it here. So I I learned a whole new skill set about like ocean freight and like due diffs and tariffs and taxes and all that jazz. So I think buying the the units and then actually getting them to my Brooklyn apartment.

May have cost me Thirteen thousand dollars? I mean And then on top of that, I have to buy all the ingredients. I'm planning a launch party. I have to have Pictures taken.

So the startup cost for the business was probably around thirty thousand dollars. And so as you were getting ready to launch, um this is still pretty much You doing everything. I mean w were you turning to to friends for help at all? Yeah, um, my friends ended up being my my founding team because I didn't know anything. I didn't know any better. So Roscoe who's our creative director, she moved to New York. Like she moved to New York

Three weeks before we launched. And you know, some of my other friends in finance I'm like, Can you do our sales? Can you do our branding? Can you do a like I had a team of six people, none of us were making any money. And Roscoe was Roscoe was somebody you knew from from high school. She's a friend from high school. Yep, Roscoe had been one of my really good friends from high school. We both went went to cast together. And you basically said, Hey, Rosco, I think her last name is Spears, right? Mm-hmm. So she wanted to start a career in fashion, so New York was attractive to her anyway. And all of my friends, they just kind of were like, What's what's the lip bar? I told them and then they were like, Okay, cool. And so now here we are

We have a business. And so I remember at our launch party, the very first person who showed up, we weren't even finished setting up yet. She came like 30 minutes early. Um, it was a beauty editor from Teen Vogue. And I think we were all stunned, like wait. People care. People are listening. And so it was a really fun event and uh we got a lot of people to come, which was really interesting because we didn't really have a big budget and we didn't really know anyone in New York City and and we had gotten the attention of some beauty editors, so that was super cool. And we were so proud. At a certain point.

You you were going to have to make the decision. Of whether to quit your job. Now, I should make the caveat here that you were one of the biggest advantages I think you had was that you were young. Yeah.

That if it didn't work out. You know, you could maybe go back. to to finance or something like that. But But it sounds like you kind of just got to a point where like, yep, I'm ready, I'm gonna quit my job and do this. And I I think it happened like

in twenty thirteen. W were you nervous at all about About quitting your this job in finance? No, I wasn't nervous. I I think you're absolutely right. I think one of the like magical things about being a first time founder, especially in an industry that

You don't know anything about You're completely naive. And and you think that everything is gonna work. Like I didn't have a plan, but I knew that it was gonna work somehow. And our first year in business we launched in twenty twelve, I think we made twenty six thousand dollars, right? And and that was mostly from friends and family who would Yes, absolutely. But that twenty six thousand dollars, even though it's not a ton of money, I was so proud to make that twenty six thousand dollars. I couldn't believe it.

I was like wait, what? I think I think my job on um at Berkeley's I you know, I think I have been making like uh seventy thousand dollars or something at that time. And so like To make, you know, uh essentially a quarter of my salary, I was like This this is a thing.

Yeah. Alright, so You quit. Sparklings.

And does anybody in your I mean Your mom like You know, she had to work really hard to um you know to make a living, to support you and then you go to off to college and I'm sure so many people are so proud of you and you had relatives in Detroit who were like, Oh my gosh, she's in If I'm your mom, I'm like my daughter's at Barclays Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm so proud. And then you call me and you say, Mom

I'm quitting. I'm starting a lipstick company. Uh what did what did people in your family say? Oh, they thought I was crazy. My mom. She was like, What? And then I remember her literally explicitly saying, Who's gonna pay your bills? And I was like, Well, I'm gonna pay my bills. I think I saved up. I I tried to save up what I thought would be a year's worth of my expenses. I ran out in like six months. But my my family thought I was crazy when I quit. And my feeling was just like look

I am more comfortable with the idea of failure than I am with regret. And and that's what made me say I can do it. And now you are

The CEO of the Lip Bar Um assuming you've no money, right? There's no how are you financing? Yeah, how are you financing this business? Oh my goodness, we're we're literally dead, bro. Me and Roscoe ended up like Airbnb. her bedroom and she moved into my room so that we could like Cover our expenses.

You know, if the first year we made twenty six thousand, then I think the next year we may have made like fifty-six thousand, which is great. We're developing. Yep, that's growth. Yep. Yeah, we're we're growing, but but ultimately we're not really making money, we're not really profitable. And Roscoe was doing freelance work on the side. She's doing freelance work sometimes and I'm I'm full time and and I I say full time with like air quotes because it's not like I had any benefits or a salary, but I'm I'm giving this my full attention. Yeah. So I was still making the products in my kitchen. So I was I was focusing on on innovation. I'm making new colors and I'm thinking of new marketing ideas because you know Roscoe is handling the the creative in terms of our photo shoots, but basically I'm handling every single thing else because like my first team of friends, that first team had all fizzled out probably within the first I don't know, nine months.

Um so Yeah, I'm on social media, I'm documenting the process of me making lipstick, um, and people are really intrigued by that. People can't believe that I'm actually making lipstick in my kitchen. So you are grinding away, Roscoe's grinding away, you're trying to get this off the ground. You're doing this in New York. And I guess around twenty thirteen.

Maybe twenty fourteen. you decide to move it to Detroit, like to to go back to where you grew up. Um Why? I mean New York, right, is the global center of fashion. One of the global centers of fashion. Yeah. Um certainly the center of like

the fashion in the US, the big makeup brands I think are headquartered there. So Why did you decide to To leave. New York.

Well, number one I was running out of money. Right. I had been thinking about it like should I stay in New York? We had already made a lot of connections with beauty editors. Um, we had been getting pressed, so I felt like we made a mark and And we could still grow without being there. And then on top of that

I saw the narrative of Detroit changing. Around two thousand thirteen. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, in two thousand twelve when I first started the company, it was all about Detroit and and Detroit's ruins. Yes. And in two thousand fourteen the narrative was changing. Shinola had just come to Detroit and and people were investing in Detroit and downtown was becoming cool again. And I was like Yeah. I was like, maybe, maybe it's time for me to go home.

to to build this business and number one, I can be a part of this renaissance. I can make sure that people Who look like me are a part of this renaissance because, you know, I had been experiencing firsthand what gentrification looks like because I was living in Brooklyn. You know, I never thought that Detroit really um deserved the bad reputation that it had gotten and I want it to be a part of like this new thing and and to meet the movers and shakers that that were were making it happen. So I was excited for the city. I just wanted to make sure that black people were a part of of the resurgents.

When we come back in just a moment. Hamelissa and Rosco spread the word about the lip bar. First, on a nationwide tour in a retrofitted airport shuttle bus. And then with an appearance on Shark Tank, which does not go particularly well.

Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2014 and Melissa Butler has left New York and moved the business to her hometown. And she knows that if women could just try her lipstick, could just see the colors. They love it.

So I knew that I wanted to be in retail, but I knew that we also weren't ready, so I decided that in order to get our products in front of customers, that we would instead of trying to figure out what counter can we get behind, how do we bring the counter to our customers. And so we built The Lip Bar truck. Which was what we we deemed the most glamorous beauty experience on wheels, and we went on a tour. You built like a a truck that was decorated with

Your logo. Full of like a like like an ice cream truck. So my ex boyfriend built party buses like From his bare hands. Wow.

Basically like a shuttle bus. So, you know, he took out the old funky seats and, you know, built a countertop, like wrapped a around the entire bus, built a cash register in the back. Um, because the goal was always we're gonna build this truck and then we're gonna go to different cities and park on the street. But then when I what I learned is that you're supposed to have a permit. Ha ha And this was like the major plot twist. Yeah. But the the responsible part of me said, Okay, why don't we find stores that we can park in front of and partner with, then we could do it without the permit.

So I started finding um partners in in all these different cities that I wanted to go to. And my our most impressive partnership is that We got urban outfitters to agree. And this is the Urban Outfitters in D C to agree to partner with us. And they they brought in like water and drinks and they allowed us to park in front and they kinda rolled a red carpet so that it was clear like a part of Urban Outfitters for the day. The one in the one in Georgetown. Yeah. Yeah. So we were able to open up the side doors and we put a TV right there. So that if people are just walking by, they can kind of see our messages like flashing in display. So people would naturally stop because they're like

This truck looks cool. So many people thought that it was like drinks, naturally. So they would come up, guys would come up and say, What do you got in there? You got beer? And we're like, No, we have lipstick. Come on up, bring your wife. And we and then like oftentimes the woman would come up because she was so intrigued. She's like you have a lipstick on there? And she would come up and the h the whole truck was mirrors. And and she would come on and she would try on the product and you know she would more often than not love the product and and make a purchase. And and how long did this tour last? Um, we went on two different tours.

And I wanna say the first one, which was the largest one. Maybe six weeks? Wow. Were you able to finance the trip through sales? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the the first tour um was wonderful and that inspired us to go on a second tour. And that's when we went on this like black college tour. So we went back to my alma mater and To drive from Detroit to Florida is crazy in a truck that's not so bright. And so guy, on the way back from this like black college tour that we did, and we actually made a lot of money and we were really excited about it. Wow.

The truck started breaking down. And like I remember we were maybe four hours away and we just kinda stopped the truck and we parked it and we were like, Okay, maybe she just needs a rest. Okay, maybe if we just give her some time off. And I think we just let it sit for an hour. And then she took us home and and that was the last time we really drove it, but Yeah, I I'm so emotional about the truck, so I can't get rid of it. Meantime, you still need to get some visibility. And so you decide to do something that

is really smart, but also really risky, which is to apply to be On Shark Tank. Yeah. Which is a great idea, but um you know lots of people apply to Shark Tank, so How did it happen that that they picked you? Do do you know? Well, I think Shark Tank picked us because we were fun and we were being ourselves. So

We submitted a video where we were talking about the product, but also we were hula hooping. Hm. So it was kinda gimmicky, but enough to like make you pay attention to what we were saying. Good on television and fun. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to the Shark Tank!

We had Jamie Simonov who founded a ring. um on the show. He he described his experience that it was really terrifying, you know, because you don't meet them. until you actually walk out and pitch your product. Hi.

I'm Melissa Butler and I'm Rasco Spears, and we live in Brooklyn, New York. I got the We were kind of nervous and and they were so cruel to us. Oh my goodness. This is a new innovation. I can see a massive market share in the clown market. They told Roscoe that that she looked dead. But she looked dead? Because of the color of her lipstick. So Roscoe, aren't you worried if you walked into a bar with that color lip? Someone try resuscitate you?

What you end up seeing is probably seven or eight minutes, but we were recording for maybe an hour. So I'm explaining to them that that the industry um is changing and that the bigger companies are slow to change and we're the smaller company and and we're fast to change and that's that's our strength. And they were like, well, if the big companies wanted to do it, they just would and they would crush you like the colorful cockroaches you are, is exactly what they said. And they would crush you like the colorful cockroaches you are. You only have so many minutes on earth, don't waste them trying to sell lipstick. I'm out. Well.

Um You know, there's a shtick there. The kind of that that mean kind of shtick and and that's part of what they do. But but I think I think Kevin O'Leary um said Hey, the chances that this business uh will succeed are zero, practically zero. And what what they didn't show on air is that When he said like don't waste your time trying to sell lipstick

They then went into this whole internal debate on like what we actually should be doing. They're like, listen, you're beautiful girls, your dresses are nice, why don't you go into the fashion, which is so offensive. And and I had been so prepared to talk numbers because like here I am like a former finance girl. And like I I'm ready to talk business. And they didn't I think the most disappointing thing for us wasn't that they called us colorful cockroaches. Like I actually didn't even care about that statement at the time. I think that it was more offensive that they did not even consider us as business women. But it sounds like It sounds like even though you felt like they were not so kind, um, that it forced you to refine the story you were telling about Lip Bar, about the Lip Bar. It did, and it it forced me to start thinking more so about how we market the company.

Mark Cuban was really adamant around me being at the forefront of the brand. He was like, look, your story is really cool. You need to step into your brand. You need to be your storyteller. At this time, I was not at the the forefront of the business. I didn't want Melissa Butler to be the lip bar. I wanted the lip bar to be the lip bar and for Melissa Butler to be Melissa Butler. And so over time I did realize that that was hurting the company with me not being at the forefront because today people are looking for brands that are gonna be more transparent and and they wanna know who's behind the business. Who is a person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so you come back to You come back to Detroit and eventually this this Shark Tank episode airs,'cause I think it they they end up airing like six or seven months after they're actually filmed. Yeah, and we had no idea. They don't really want to. We found out maybe ten days in advance. And did even though you got kind of pilloried by them That must have helped your visibility. Oh, it's crazy. Oh, our website crashed that night. I want to say we had like 40,000 hits to the website within just a couple of minutes. Wow. We had all this stuff on like back order. We couldn't like maintain the orders. I was still shipping the orders, I think. And Shark Tank really like fast.

Yeah. By the way, you were still this is just being financed entirely through cash flow. You have not raised any money or anything. You're you're hiring people and paying them probably a small salary and offering them some equity. really just paying them a small salary. Right. So and we're hiring entry level people. Right. Basically like hourly workers to just help us

Ship the orders. And we had just started transitioning into getting the product manufactor. So that was my goal. Like, okay, well, Melissa, you need to get your product manufactor so that you can then launch into retail. Wow. And then it was time. I was like, I'm gonna find a retailer and and target it was our our goal. Target was your goal. Target was the only people we pitched. And now Target everybody wants to be in Target, right? I mean that's like the top place to get into. They get pitched a million times a a day Did you even have any connections? Like how had who did you who did you know to call?

I had no connections and I I so I couldn't call anyone. Um, but I'm gonna just start reaching out to the buyers. And so I went on LinkedIn. and I started searching for target buyers, like color cosmetics buyers. Like I was searching everything. I love it. Beauty buyer, color cosmetics buyer, target buyer. And I think I was like emailing like 12 different people. So this is probably a eight months, eight month process of me stalking people at Target. Wow, and so uh after eight months of stalking people, um, you eventually do connect With a a target.

buyer, I think a makeup buyer. Yeah. And and I'm I'm curious, like w what did you say in your email to her?'Cause I mean, I'm sure that was getting lots of emails and and and you had to stand out so What did you write?

Oh, I mean I threw the whole kitchen sink in. I told her a little bit about the story and about our truck and how cool we are and how, you know, I think we had maybe 40,000 followers on social media or something. I told her that everything was vegan and cruelty free. I talked about how cool our packaging was, but I think the the real thing that stood out was that I talked more than anything about what we could do for Target instead of what Target could do for us. I'm like my customer shopping there and she's not shopping there for makeup. Ha. And it's because you don't have me, basically. Wow. And so on my second follow up, she came back and was like, Oh wait, your packaging actually is really cool. Can you send me some samples?

And I probably screamed at I screamed and I probably took a lap around my house because that's what I do when I'm really excited. Yeah. We had a call. And she was like look.

I think that your brand is really cool. But I also I know that your brand is really small and like maybe too small for Target, I don't know. And she was like, but I'm willing to take a chance and allow you to drop shit on Target.com. Like, do you want to launch on Target.com? I'm like, absolutely. Wow. And so what we did was we launched a brand new color and we blast it to our audience, but you couldn't get it on our website. You could only get it on target.com. But how did you I mean there's Thousands, tens of thousands of products on target.com.

How did you gain visibility on on the website initially? So the thing about launching in a retailer is it's not their job to sew your product. It's your job to sew your product. Right. So we literally pushed all of our like our emails. our social media followers, all our friends and family. It was like a brand new launch. Like oh my God, we're in Target. We were so excited. We sh we shared it with our community in a way where it was a win for all of us. Like can you believe that the lip bar is now on target.com. And and they they bought that color. And it sold out actually. And she was like, Okay, I wanna introduce you to the store buyer, essentially. And we pitched it and we were launching in Target nine months later. Wow.

You know, I think a lot of people w walk into a target and think, Oh, all the products here, the people who make them are probably multi millionaires. But it's actually Not that simple because there's lots of products at Target and you gotta sell them. But I have to imagine that being on the shelves a target. meant that you started to generate some revenue that

started to make your business sustainable. Yeah, so uh we launched and We went into forty four stores. That was the test that was offered.

We didn't have a marketing budget, but we had a publicist. We hired a publicist and and the reality is the makeup aisle Didn't really have any small businesses. So the fact that we have shelf space in Target as this really small brand was like an anomaly. Yeah so we had this huge PR campaign. You know, a lot of people started talking about it. Refinery twenty nine talked about it, Teen Vogue talked about it. And we we had like the number one selling lipstick.

For the first month of our launch with no marketing budget. And Target was like, Whoa, we weren't expecting this of this brand. And so we grew very quickly. So we went from 40 stores to I think 144 stores. And then we went into like four hundred stores, and now we're in about five hundred stores about to expand again. Oh. You I think in twenty eighteen for the first time you w you brought in some outside

Funding. you got um an outside investment. Did you ever I mean Think about pitching to V Cs and to venture you know, to to investors or d did that investment kind of do they kinda come to you and say, Hey, we wanna we wanna invest? Well it's a mixture of both. So now we're in Target stores, right? And and we're growing in Target and you know

We need it money. We need it money for finance the business. Yeah,'cause this is inventory and and the beauty industry is not necessarily replenishable. So the average woman, it may take her Eight months to even use her favorite lipstick. Mm.

I remember having call with investors and and pitching people and they would all say like Melissa, you're so impressive. Like you're such an impressive founder, but we're not gonna We're not gonna invest. The reality is, guy, black women are starting businesses faster than any other group of people in this country. But we're not getting funding. And also because we're not getting funding, we can't really grow our ideas. So if we really wanna like reduce the wealth gap in this country, we're gonna have to start giving opportunities to to women who look like me.

Hey y Tristan Walker was on the show, founder of Walker and company Bevel is his best best known product. And He pointed on the show that If you look at the beauty industry and consumers.

By far, far and away. On a Proportional. basis. Black consumers.

spend more money on beauty products than any other Group in the United States. Anyone else on beauty, but meanwhile You know. Black businesses, black beauty businesses.

Aren't well funded. So for a smaller company, it's like we have to fight tooth and nail to get a little funding. Yeah. Yeah, and and and I should say you were able to f finally get some money, um from a fun that was started by the beauty entrepreneur Richelieu Dennis. Um, which is a fun I think he started it for black women founders in in Uh twenty eighteen.

And then in twenty nineteen you decided to actually open a brick and mortar store in Detroit, um, which is I think really close to the Shinola store, right? Yeah, we're right behind the Shinola store. We're basically And their alley and I had never even wanted a store just because, like, no, I don't want to maintain a store or think about a store. We we were already in Target. But the thing about Detroit is

Even With its resurgents. There's still very little in within the city limits. So

You know, I felt like this was my opportunity to really like again, be a part of that renaissance and and really um give people the opportunity to shop high quality makeup. Yeah. And it really warmed my heart, guy, because you know, we open in the dead of winter. We opened on our on our birthday, essentially, and we opened to a line of maybe two hundred people. In the in the dead of winter. Like it's freezing, like because people were just so excited about that. About People were so excited. This is a city where there frankly isn't a lot of opportunity. And so

Typically people have to leave to build something. You know, and I I am a person who left, but then I came back. And they've they've shown me so much love. Like the lip bar has grown since we've come back, like we five X the business. Since I've moved back. to Detroit.

Mm. Of course then. Twenty twenty happens. Covid. Shut down. The retail.

Business really gets hit. Parts of the beauty industry do okay. But there is a slowdown. Did did you guys see a uh Pretty

significant slowdown, you know, once Covid became a reality in in March and April. Yeah, what's crazy is like February was such a good month for us. February was unprecedented, but you know, I think it was just preparing us for what was next. No. You know, people always talk about the lipstick effect, which is this idea that Even in

An economic recession or even a depression. Women will still rely on those small novelties that make them feel good. But You typically only put on makeup when you're leaving the house. And no one was leaving.

And we were really we were really concerned if I'm gonna be g just completely honest. I was like, I don't know how we're gonna survive this business. Um the goal and and the approach was really to just do the things that we had always done, which is like Just continuous connect with our customers and meet them where they are. Um our relationship with our customer is

so strong because we actually are our customer. So, you know, I'm not married. I'm on online dates right now and so I'm looking, you know, how do I update my profile? How do I look cute for my FaceTime date? How do I instill confidence to my team? And for me, that was like very easily lip color. I was like, by putting on this lip color, like I look a little bit more alive, I look more confident, I look like I'm ready for the day. And we pivoted our messaging and then very quickly our sales rebounded. So while March was a tough month, April was It we had grown back to like our norm. And then June with the whole Black Lives Mattering and this

This more apparent need to support small businesses and particularly small black owned businesses, we had our best month ever. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. you know, a lot of uh growing awareness and

and desire among many people who are watching the And taking part in the protests against racial justice. to support black businesses. Um and a lot of

black entrepreneurs we've had on the show have talked about those months as being They were just overwhelmed with the with what happened to their businesses and and the attention that they received during that time. Um does that continue for you? Has it has it been sustained? N um our sales have sustained, but that level of support, no. I think that

I mean for me I didn't expect it to. Yeah. So I remember when it was happening I call an all hands meeting with my team and I said, look We're getting flitted right now. And it's our goal and it's our job to make sure that these aren't charity dollars. And that's the thing, like we don't As as a black business owner, I don't want you to support my business. I want you to shop my product because you think that's great. Exactly. Because we make it easy for you to understand what products work for your complexion, not because you feel bad about something. And like our goal is to have lifetime value.

you know, with our customer and have this this um more than transactional relationship with our customer. Yeah. A and I mean you guys have have branched out into all kinds of makeup like you do eyeshadow and and foundation and concealer and and even like the lipstick colors that you're doing now. I guess you're offering I guess you'd say like m more sort of mainstream colors as well. So over time we've I mean, we've of course evolved. You know, when we first launched, we were really just trying to make a statement and we had to introduce some practicality. So now we have, you know, we have everything. We have like over Sixteen nudes.

'Cause again, we're really driving that whole like beauty for every single complexion. And we have the best writs. Like Michelle Obama just wore our writ, which is our best seller in the whole company. Yeah, it's it's crazy. But we we stay true to who we are. We still have a black lipstick, we still have a blupstick, we have tons of purple. Um, so it's it's a balance between like how do we leave something for people to get creative or, you know, reimagine themselves, even if it's just for one night. So so let's say you're sort of I mean You are obviously growing and growing fast and your brand awareness is growing really fast.

Do you think I mean can you imagine? Do you think you can grow? to you know at scale to become a huge brand Independently or do you think eventually like other cosmetics brands like Benefit or, you know, other brands that were event uh e eventually became huge.

That you would have to be purchased or partnered, you know, with a bigger company a L'Oreal or Revlon or L V M H or you know one of these huge multinationals. Do you think that I mean, could you see a a world where you would partner or you would You know, become part of their portfolio to

I if it meant that you would become Like You know ubiquitous everywhere around the world in airports and duty free shops and so on. Yeah, I mean I think If we had the opportunity to really become like this world renowned brand, then I I think that that would be.

The perfect way to like submit the legacy and all of the hard work that that myself and my team has been doing over the last eight years because having all of these high and low moments, you know, they've come at the expense of of of lots of things. There have been times where I've been, you know, a bat sister or a bat friend or a bat girlfriend or a bat daughter. um, because I've been sacrificing for for the business. So I think the ultimate way to to say this was worth it is having this brand that that really

makes makeup more inclusive and makes makeup easier and and really has this like landmark and this this leaves its mark on the beauty industry. When when you think of your journey, Melissa How much of your success do you think has to do with the hard work that you put in and your intelligence. And how much do you think is because you just

You got lucky. At times. Um And and of course I know this question is coming, but it it's a really tough question. Um I think I think earlier on it was all hard work.

And I think that hard work is still you know, I'm still receiving the fruits of that labor. And nowadays I'm thinking it's luck. So I don't think any anyone can fulfit. I think that sometimes the universe is just in alignment. And right now I really feel good. That's Melissa Butler, founder and CEO of the Lip Bar.

And by the way, after nearly a decade in the beauty business... Melissa says when it comes to putting on her own makeup Yes, I'm a beauty founder, but no, I don't know how to do makeup. And people who I would meet, they would say you shouldn't say that. And I'm like, why? It's true, I don't know how to do my makeup. And like and I've tried to do a YouTube video and I came out looking like a fool. Like I looked I looked nothing like that tutorial.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app, it's usually a plus right at the top, so you never miss a new episode of the show and it's totally free. This episode was produced by James Delahousey with music composed by Ramteen Erablui. It was edited by Nebu Grant with research help from Dereth Gales. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Carrie Thompson, Sam Paulson, Liz Metzger, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Massini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening.

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