What do you do when you are faced with rejections? Do you sit and continually lick your wounds? Or do you get up and make lemonades from lemons? Melissa Butler of Lip Bar Foundation is teaching us exactly how to be a star after rejection.
Beginning her career in corporate America, the Detroit native made a drastic shift when she decided to become a beauty entrepreneur. Frustrated with the lack of diversity and excessive chemicals used in mainstream beauty products, Butler decided to create vegan, cruelty-free lipsticks that would disrupt modern-day beauty standards.
With her bold approach and unique selection of eye-popping colors, Butler manifested, researched, and created her own beauty products by hand, ultimately making her way to primetime TV on ABC’s Shark Tank. Though, instead of getting investors for her beauty brand The Lip Bar, once she arrived, Butler was faced with doubters who insisted “she would never even get market share” with a business like hers.
Despite the public rejection, Butler remained true to her vision, continuing to create environmentally-friendly, vibrant products by any means necessary for a diverse clientele. “I’m a rebel with a cause to change the way people think about beauty,” says Butler.
You can now find Melissa’s product on the shelves of Targets nationwide and is steadily becoming a force in the cosmetics world.
In an interview with Essence, Melissa says “though what I had is passion. I was determined to change the way women thought about beauty. My goal was to challenge the beauty standard.“
We all know it isn’t easy to be a boss, but Melissa is also helping us out, “The toughest thing about being a boss is managing people. Anyone can be a CEO, but it requires skill, communication, and emotional intelligence to be a leader. Its a muscle that I have worked to build and I look forward to its growth.“
This leading lady also has the perfect advice for us; “Be open to failure and receiving advice. Be open to learning. But also, be confident in your ability to move the ship in the right direction. If you aren’t confident, those moments of resistance will eat you alive. “
“Identify your passion and reflect on your strengths. Don’t become an entrepreneur just to escape the 9-5 or because you want to be your own boss. It’s a misconception. I’m a boss and I still answer to all of my customers, my investors, my team, etc. I work much harder than I did while on Wall Street. But the difference is, I believe in it. So you gotta approach entrepreneurship with passion. You need to know the purpose and the unique value proposition of whatever it is that you’re offering.”
Read Melissa Butler’s interview with Essence Here.
