Jamie Kern Lima on dealing with rejection when building IT Cosmetics

“When you google my tale, you see Denny’s waitress designed billion-dollar empire, you see the highlight reel,” says Jamie Kern Lima, the founder IT Cosmetics.

Individuals elements are legitimate: In higher education Kern Lima labored at Denny’s, and in 2008, she and her husband both give up their jobs (Kern Lima was a regional news anchor at the time) and began a make-up organization. Kern Lima desired a basis that would go over her rosacea (a prevalent pores and skin situation that will cause redness on the facial area), so she designed one particular.

The make-up line expanded from there, and eight several years afterwards, L’Oreal acquired IT Cosmetics for $1.2 billion in dollars. Kern Lima pocketed around $410 million from the offer, in accordance to Forbes, and for about 3 decades she stayed on as CEO of IT Cosmetics, which made her the very first woman CEO in L’Oreal’s background.

But the rags to riches tale is not the full story. The real truth is that Kern Lima expert many years of rejection, setbacks and was down to her previous $1,000 at one issue prior to her “fairytale” accomplishment. To transfer ahead, Kern Lima acquired she experienced to just take it all in stride.

Kern Lima remembers a single male investor instructed her that he failed to consider women would get makeup from a person who appeared like her, “with her entire body and body weight.”

“That a person damage,” states Kern Lima. “I went to the automobile and cried.”

QVC declined to sell IT Cosmetics for 3 several years and Sephora stated no for six yrs. Today both equally offer the model.

“Understanding how to not get rejection personal, it is really so essential,” Kern Lima claims.

Each and every time she obtained a no, Kern Lima would respond to the merchant as if it was heading to be a indeed 1 day. “I would practically comply with up with an email thanking them and indicating I are unable to wait around for the working day that we are in your suppliers.” Then she would abide by up any time IT bought press or had a new products start.

“Normally gurus who indicate well have not truly created or created just about anything on their own. And, even though they could believe that they are visionaries, they generally aren’t capable to consider the accomplishment of some thing they have not found ahead of,” Kern Lima suggests in her new memoir, “Imagine It: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable.”

Kern Lima suggests if she experienced recognised that earlier as a youthful entrepreneur, she would have saved herself lots of sleepless nights.

“To enterprise into unmapped territory, in some cases we have to just take the professionals off the pedestal we’re made in our minds for them, and put our instinct on to just one,” she writes.

The vital to success, says Kern Lima, is staying still and listening to that “tiny, distinct voice inside of of us telling us what to do.”

Although it is human character to really feel harm or resentful in direction of anyone who rejects your idea or products, holding bitterness will hardly ever perform, she says.

“If I would held grudges from from anybody who just one rejected me, I’d hardly ever have turned these Nos into glorious YESes,” she writes in “Believe that It.”

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