Melissa Butler Turned Purpose Into Business

We’ve briefly touched on The Lip Bar and how Melissa Butler came up with the idea and launched in 2012. Black women entrepreneurs have the power of a thousand suns, because if you can push through that much adversity to create your own company, that’s not a company, that’s a kingdom.

Melissa Butler was determined to come up with her own beauty line after questioning the chemicals in products, ideal standards of beauty and the limited range of colors. She thought to herself:

“So I started making lipstick in my kitchen because I believed beauty shouldn’t compromise health and because I was determined to not change the way I looked to fit into some superficial or trendy beauty standard. Fuck that. There is no standard”

She left her high-paying NYC job in finance and embarked on a journey fueled by her own passions and dreams. Despite being rejected by “Shark Tank” she persevered and later realized that it was a blessing in disguise.

In Dreams in Drive podcast Episode 119 titled “It’s Okay To Pivot” Melissa shares her journey and her 4 keys to success, which are:

Confidence, Support, Focus, and Belief.

The podcast starts off strong with commentary like,

“it’s unfortunate when people stay in a lane that they never chose.”

Melissa talked about how she was pulled into the finance industry with dreams of making a “shit ton” of money. Everyone hated their jobs and she realized she didn’t want that to be her future.

The Detroit native was also inspired by her family that included some entrepreneurs.

She explained that her biggest challenge was becoming a cosmetic chemist, but she took everything as a learning curve that she was determined to conquer in order to get her business up and running.

Melissa says knowing that you’re ready. Regardless of perfection, your investment in your purpose tells you to do as much research as possible.

With that, we leave a little more knowledgable with wise words from the founder of The Lip Bar.