Melissa Butler: "The world is telling us that we're not enough"

Every month, I publish an interview with a business leader in Delta Sky magazine. The series is called #5MinutesWith. In truth, we usually spend much more than five minutes chatting. So I’ll be publishing longer versions of our conversations here.

Melissa Butler was a Wall Street analyst when in 2012 she started making lipstick in her Brooklyn kitchen. Unfulfilled in finance and frustrated with a beauty industry that did not create the products she wanted or represent women who looked like her, she learned how to make cosmetics by reading books, networking with chemists and going, as she puts it, to “Youtube University.” Six years later and with no marketing but word-of-mouth, Butler’s The Lip Bar is a $7 million business, selling its colorful, vegan products in Target stores around the US and opening its first retail space in Detroit.

What prompted you to leave Wall Street to start your business?

What led me to launching The Lip Bar was my frustration with the beauty industry — its lack of diversity, its excessive amounts of chemicals. I noticed just within my own career how looks impact your self-esteem and your ability to be successful. I wanted to launch a company that would be steeped in inclusivity and in this idea that “you are enough”. Because the world is telling us that we're not enough.

There has always been this very linear standard of beauty: "In order to be beautiful, you need to look like this." It's a very small box and if you're not in that box, then how are you made to feel? Where is your validation? I wanted to create this company that says, "You are already beautiful as is, and if you would like to enhance your beauty, then I want you to be able to do that using these high-quality, vegan, cruelty-free cosmetics at a very affordable cost."

I understood how impactful it was using these very diverse models, whether it was plus-sized models or black models, or Indian models or a trans model, how it really impacted someone who was in that underserved community and was never looked at as beautiful. I wanted to transform their mind about beauty and not transform their face. So I started making lipstick in my kitchen with that goal in mind.

You were rejected on Shark Tank, pretty abruptly. How did you move on?

They were very cruel, they dismissed the idea, they dismissed me as a business woman. I come from Wall Street, I was ready to talk about numbers! It taught me to not give up in the face of adversity. Yes, this person has a substantial amount of money. Yes, they even have some business expertise, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is the be-all, end-all. It taught me resilience and that it would be an injustice to let someone else have power over my dream. My purpose was so strong that no amount of public rejection, failure or fear would stop me from going after that thing I was passionate about.

A million people watch the show, and they re-aired the episode 15 times. That's hundreds of thousands of hits to our website because of it. So, it ended up being a really great experience, and it's my happiest rejection.

In 2015, you left New York and took the business back to your hometown of Detroit. What motivated you? 

I hadn't lived in Detroit since high school. I saw the story changing from Detroit as the “city of ruins” to Detroit as the “comeback city”, and I wanted to be part of its renaissance. I wanted to make sure my company had a footprint in the city I've always loved and that always gave me such a feeling of pride. We're Motor City, we largely built the middle class of America! Even while the world were turning their backs on Detroit, I always looked at it as an opportunity for me to go away, go to college, get a skillset and bring it back. I've always had the intention to come back home and really just put my value into that ecosystem. And to be clear, the ecosystem of the city provides that value right back. It’s extremely supportive.

A version of this interview is published in the February 2019 issue of Delta Sky magazine. #5MinutesWith