--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to an unbelievable episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast. Let's do this thing, all right?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's Mel. There are so many times that I sit down and start talking to you, and I just wish I could see you. I wish you were here with me so that I could see you as we're having this conversation. One of these days, maybe we need to do the podcast live so that I could see you. Or maybe we could organize a walk where we could walk and talk, because that's always been my vision for the Mel Robbins podcast.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, when you and I met on Monday and we talked last time, it was all about graduation. That was the theme. Do not give up on your dreams. Failure is not an option. Absolutely love that conversation. And I want to talk about it again. Not that exact thing, but about the future, because it's in the air. This time of year, everybody is thinking about the future.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And some of you are thinking about the immediate future and you're super excited about it. You know what your plans are. You know what you're doing. That is so awesome. But there's so many of you that are looking out into the near future and you're freaking out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like, for example, I was just talking to my daughter this morning. We were on FaceTime and she had just gone for a run. I'm like, how are you doing? She's like, I'm totally stressed out. And I'm like, what's going on? She's like, I got to pack up this thing. My roommates are signing leases. The lease is going to end. I'm thinking, your lease ends in three months. Like, why are you freaking out about this today? Why? Because she's thinking about the future. And she's starting to get nervous about all the stuff that needs to happen. And she's starting to doubt how it's going to happen and freaking out about it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And here's another example of it. Everywhere I go with our son, Oakley, who's a rising senior in high school now, I bet you can guess the question that adults ask him. Where are you going to college? What are your plans? What are you going to study? And at that age, I would think 99% of us are like, I don't have a clue what I'm going to study. I'm going to college to help me figure out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so every time somebody asks Oakley that, there's something interesting that I notice. There's a small hesitation before he tells them the school he wants to ED to. And that hesitation is because it's a reach. That hesitation is a small kernel of doubt. Should I say this? Do I really believe that I can get in there? Do I have the right to apply to that school?
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I think every one of us has an example of that in our life, right? Do I believe that it's going to work out? Am I making the right decision? And that's what I want to talk to you about today. How do you believe in yourself, especially in a moment like right now, swirling with endings and with beginnings?
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's always how I feel in the summer, right? Summer is supposed to be this awesome time where we relax, we dial it down. If you're lucky and you can get to the beach, that's fantastic or a pool. But when I'm at the beach, you know what I'm thinking about? My freaking future.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And today I want to throw how you believe in yourself in the middle of all these endings and beginnings. And how do you believe in yourself when you haven't even started taking the actions? How do you believe in yourself when you don't know how this thing is going to turn out that you really want to do?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, my guest today, she's a super close friend of mine. And she is somebody you want to hear from right now. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about none other than Jamie Kern Lima. She's the founder of IT Cosmetics, which she sold to L'Oreal for a billion dollars.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Jamie is the queen of learning how to believe in yourself because when she started IT Cosmetics, she was not some influencer with daddy's money. No, no, no, no, no, no. She didn't get a degree in how to start a company. She was a waitress at Denny's with terrible skin, rosacea, like the bright pink kind of breakouts all over her cheeks. And it was that rosacea and that hardworking work ethic from being a Denny's waitress that made her create her own foundation. And that was the beginning of this billion dollar company that she created in her living room, IT Cosmetics.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I know you're going to love hearing from her, which is why I am so excited that you're here, Jamie Kern Lima, to talk to us about your journey. You are one of my favorite human beings of all time. I cannot thank you enough, Jamie, for being here as my friend and for being here as the professor on the topic of purpose and learning how to believe in yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a big, warm Mel Robbins podcast. Welcome to Jamie Kern Lima.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Mel, thank you. Thank you for having me. This is going to be fun and real and raw, but I just want to say, Mel, something really important to me that I didn't want to leave here without saying, but everybody listening needs to know this. You are one of the rare human beings that is the same off air, behind the scenes, in your everyday life as you are in all the public things.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You and I have both met so many celebrities and so many people with millions and millions of followers. And it's very rare they're the same. And I just, one of the things I love so much about you is you are even more funny, even more intelligent and brilliant and kind and raw and real in real life. And I'm just grateful to be here for you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Okay. Just that. I think the episode's over now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, we got to go back in time because one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is because the entire mission of this show is to empower and inspire you listening to us right now to create a better life, whatever that means for you. To take the simple steps that sometimes feel impossible to pursue your dreams, to improve your health, to create greater connections, to believe in yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And Jamie truly is not only the professor of purpose, but her life story is a demonstration in cultivating belief. Belief in your ideas, belief in your intuition, belief that things will turn out. And so I want to go back in time and talk about how you started as a waitress in Denny's and then from waitressing at Denny's pursued a dream that you had of being on television. And as a fellow former waitress, I would love to start there.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, waitress at Denny's, full uniform, name tag to prove it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, I forgot they had uniforms.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Full uniform. What was your favorite thing on the menu?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh gosh. I love the pancakes. You know what? Just simple.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: It's so funny how our steps are ordered, I think in life. And so often I remember being a waitress at Denny's. I remember feeling, and maybe someone listening to us can relate to this right now. You have this feeling inside of you, like there's something more I'm supposed to do, but you don't know what it is yet. And you doubt it might be possible.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I remember being a waitress at Denny's and just feeling like I have these big dreams, but not quite knowing like, how do I believe I'm worthy of them yet? At the same time, Mel, the kitchen at the Denny's I worked at was a disaster. Like they would take an hour to get pancakes out. So I learned to talk to people so that they wouldn't leave. They often did leave or they'd throw like a dime and a penny on the table and leave.
--:-- Mel Robbins: As your tip as if it's your fault.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Exactly. But it's so funny how, years later when I ended up launching my own business, I'm like, oh, I've got to get the operations right or nothing else matters. It's just those little things we learn along the way.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: But yeah, after that, I thought my whole life I would have a talk show. I watched Oprah in my living room growing up. So I thought for sure I would share other people's stories with the world. So I went into, did all the jobs, saved up all my money to pay for school, and pushed grocery carts in the grocery parking lot, sliced meat in the deli, all those jobs. And then found myself in what I thought was my dream job working in TV news. And I thought this is it, right?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And what I didn't realize was I was about to enter this huge season of setback in my life of self-doubt. I have a skin condition called rosacea. And for me, it started getting really red, really bumpy. And I would be anchoring the news live thinking like, okay, this is it. This is it. And I started hearing in my earpiece from my producer, "There's something on your face. There's something on your face. You need to wipe it off." And I was live on television, right? And I would glance down during the commercial break and I saw, oh, the makeup is breaking up on my face and these big red bumps are coming through.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: But so often in life, the seasons that feel like setbacks are actually set ups for what we're called to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, stop right there. Did you hear that? The seasons of your life that are setbacks are often set ups for what you're called to do. I want to just make sure everybody heard that. And I want to take a highlighter and also highlight something that you said about being a waitress at Denny's. And it's this. You said our steps are ordered. So can you explain what that means, particularly to somebody who's listening, who may feel like, I know I'm meant for something greater. Why the hell am I at this step? And this does not feel like it is on the path of where I'm supposed to go. So what do you mean by the fact that our steps are ordered?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, I believe everything in life is happening for us, even when it doesn't make sense.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can we just, what do you mean happening for us? So to somebody that's really in it, Jamie. What does that mean?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Let me frame it around our topic of purpose, right? So often people feel empty because they feel like, oh, my purpose needs to be some job. It needs to be my job or it needs to be this grand thing I haven't figured out yet. But for those of us that have accomplished a goal we always dreamed of, we get to it and we're like, oh, this isn't it, right? It's never, in my opinion, purpose is never this big goal necessarily. Purpose is so often when we're able to serve the person we once were or serve in a way for something we've gone through.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And here's what I mean. I think our purpose can be like, oh, wow, I went through a really freaking hard season in my life. And I now am actually realizing I'm born to be a generational cycle breaker in my family. That is an incredible purpose, right? When I actually just take a minute and say hi to someone else who's lonely, maybe it's in the coffee line at Starbucks, maybe it's the neighbor down the street, whatever it is, you feel in your gut a sense of fulfillment, a sense of alignment when you're doing something in your purpose.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I think that the big mistake people make is they think it's this end goal, right? A lot of times when people hear my story, Denny's waitress builds billion dollar company, they think my purpose was to be some big entrepreneur. It wasn't.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What was it?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: In the journey of how I did it. I took this massive risk, right? Taking my makeup off on national television when I was told not to and being brave enough to be seen and helping other women realize that they're worthy and enough exactly as they are, seeing them as who they are. To me, that is my purpose. And in doing that, a byproduct of that with IT Cosmetics is we built a company with millions and millions and millions of customers.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And what's wild is 5% of our customers actually have skin issues like I do. 95% don't. It's just that they felt seen and connected with something that spoke to their soul, right? For me, being willing to say, here I am exactly as I am, no makeup and all my skin issues. I think people connected with that, that feeling of, oh, I'm enough exactly as I am.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what else I think is a really important part of your story? It is waitressing. It's pushing carts in a supermarket. It's working in the back house of a restaurant. That's my story too. Helping my best friend on her paper route, busing tables. And I think when you work in retail or you work in a service job, and you feel at times invisible, you start to realize how important it is to treat everybody with respect and kindness, that there is no work that is beneath you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And when you can bring that level of service to the job that you have right now, even if you hate it, even if people treat you like garbage, even if the back of the house is not getting those pancakes out on time and people are angry. If you can bring a sense of grace and service and just humility, I think it changes how you show up because you don't ever forget what it's like to be treated like shit.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes. Because somebody was mad that their pancakes weren't out on time.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And also you and I have had this experience where we've truly gotten to see and be almost every type of person in every type of environment. And so now it's like, whether it's me building a business or you building one of the top shows in the world, I feel part of that was like, oh, we understand who's listening and watching you right now. I understand who real people are, who bought my products.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And so when you mentioned steps are ordered, it's like, no matter where you are in your life right now, what you're going through, I believe every piece of it. Whether it's someone just cut me off in a parking lot and screamed at me or whatever it might be you're going through, all of those things are happening for you, I believe, so that you're amassing this toolbox of understanding and getting strong enough and equipped enough for the purpose you step into.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Amazing. So, Professor of Purpose, Jamie Kern Lima, right there. That's your takeaway number one. The steps are ordered. Believe in that. And this moment is helping you. It's giving you something. So that is one major tool that you used along the way. Let's go back to that moment because I think you were 28 years old, right? When you're sitting on television in Seattle, you are a local news anchor, you're living the dream, you're on your way, and you are now starting to have this nightmare happen where your rosacea is breaking through on camera in front of everybody, the makeup that they put on you. And you've got people in your ear telling you there's something wrong with your face. And you're realizing, holy cow, the makeup that they've put on my face cannot cover the rosacea and the skin issues that I have. So what do you do in that moment?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Well, the first thing I did was start freaking out, right? Thinking thoughts in my head, like, oh, am I going to get fired? Are viewers changing the channel right now? Am I costing the company ratings? So it was this big...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Could you feel those moments when you could feel the makeup kind of disappearing? Like there were moments when I used to be a commentator for CNN, I was pre-menopausal, where I could feel the hot flash coming. I didn't feel it until they said it in my earpiece. And then what would start to happen was I would get so nervous and stressed out because I kept trying to cover it during commercial breaks. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So what I remember is anchoring the news live and sometimes you have to be happy, tell this happy story or you're serious telling. And I just remember my heart beating in my ears, hoping people weren't changing the channel. And it started this thing where I would spend what, it's funny, I was anchoring the news and people think when you're doing that, you must have all this money, but you really don't get paid much at all. And I took my little paycheck that I had and started spending it on department store makeup, professional artistry makeup, drugstore makeup. I couldn't find anything that worked.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I had this idea one day like, oh, if I can't find anything that works for me, there's probably a whole lot of other people out there that feel like makeup doesn't work for them. And it was sort of this idea where I was like, if I could figure out how to make something that worked for me, it'd help a whole lot of people. And that was my knowing or this gut feeling, but then my head, Mel, was like, oh, but you got no money. You got no connections. You know no one in the beauty industry. You're unqualified.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So I sat in this place, right? And I just want to talk about purpose. I had this gut feeling like I was supposed to go for this thing but then my head was like, oh but here all the reasons why you're not qualified to do it. Plus you're in your dream job. And I sat between those two and it wasn't until I had this big, big aha moment of why I needed to do it that pushed me over the edge.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So what is the aha moment?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So I realized one day I'm like, this makes no sense. There are thousands of makeup companies out there. How does nothing work for me? Right. Then I had this moment where I realized I've never seen a model with bright red bumpy skin selling makeup. Like you always see these photoshopped airbrushed models. And I realized now like, wow, my whole life, I've actually loved those beauty commercials and I love seeing the magazines and I always aspire to look like them. But deep down inside, they always made me feel like I wasn't enough.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I had this moment. I was literally on the news set when this happened where I was like, wait a minute. What if it's not just about launching a makeup product? Like what if I could actually figure out how to do it, which I had no idea how and I had no money. But it's like, what if I could actually launch a product that works for me? And what if I actually put real people as models, like every age, shape, size, skin tone, skin challenge. What if I use them as models, call them beautiful and mean it for every little kid out there who's about to start doubting themselves and every grown woman who still does.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And that deep source of pain from how I was feeling not enough and what could I do about it? That, in my opinion, is one of the strongest ways to find your purpose. It's what has just destroyed you or hurt you that you've maybe made it through. And how can you now use that making it through to help someone who's going through it?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. That's like a mic drop moment from our professor of purpose, Jamie Kern Lima. So I want to make sure nobody's left behind.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And there was billions of dollars worth of wisdom that you just dropped. But I got to hear a word from our sponsors. So just hit the pause button and we're going to continue this conversation when we come back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm here with the founder of IT Cosmetics, the billion dollar brand that Jamie built from scratch on her own and then sold to L'Oreal. She is giving us a masterclass today on purpose. And so I want to try to unpack it for anybody that is listening to this and you have this sense that you're made for more.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So one of the things that I heard is look in your life and see what problems or frustrations or things that you're struggling with that feel like a setback. And Jamie gave you the example of the rosacea on her skin and her inability to find something that actually could help her solve this issue of being able to cover it up so that she could do her dream job. And that setback is a setup for something new.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then get out of your own sort of selfish or self-loathing or the self-excuses and the self-pity and remind yourself that there are 8 billion people on this planet now. There are other people that are dealing with this. And that if you can figure out how to put your energy into making this better for yourself and you bring other people into the fold with you, you now have something that's worth working on because it helps you and it's going to help other people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I also want to point something out that Jamie will not tell you, but I sure as hell will. And that is that this was about 14 or 15 years ago. So we're talking 2007, 2008, correct?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: In my opinion, Jamie Kern Lima is the reason why we have this real beauty movement. There always has to be the first person and she was it. So when you look around the internet and social media and you see people doing naked faces, that was not something people did in 2007. It was all airbrush. It was all perfection. That was the beauty standard.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so you've got a woman who is sitting in Seattle, who has no experience and no money, deciding that she is going to not only figure out how to create a makeup line for people who have issues with their skin, but that she's going to do something nobody has ever done, which is put real normal people like you and me into her campaigns when she finally gets this figured out. And she's going to show people what her skin actually looks like in order to sell it. I mean, that was a revolutionary idea. She was the first.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I'm telling you this because you could be the first. You have something that you can solve and you could be the first to change the way that people think about an issue. And so, Jamie, let's pick up the story because how do you go from this aha moment like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, to doing something? Because I think some of us have aha moments, right? And then we doubt them.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because we doubt them. We think like, oh, someone's already done it.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or whatever.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: First of all, if you're out there right now and you think, oh, you have an idea or a way you want to show up in the world or you want to help, but you think, oh, someone's already done it. Literally. There's only one of you in the entire universe, which by definition means no one has ever done it the way you're going to do it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So when I launched this, say that again, Jamie, for the people that are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, kids, calm down. I will wait. Jamie just said something I was doing my dishes. Say that again. Talk about the fact that this matters. This is huge because I think the biggest reason we talk ourselves out of things is we think, oh, someone's already done it. Someone's already done it before, you know, who must be smarter than me or more talented or more whatever it is than me.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And what I have learned and then proven, and I want to tell you, too, about all, I'm going to get so excited now, because no, when you do this thing, don't be shocked when there's millions and millions of rejections and people don't get it right, because it's never been done before.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Oh, yeah. Because there's only one of you. There's only one of you doing it the way you're going to do it. But just to recap that there is literally only one of you in the entire universe. And so if you are going to show up to this world authentic, that means whatever you do, if it's authentic to you, it's actually by definition never been done before.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And so when you show up that way, don't be surprised if not everyone gets it right away. Or, in my case, all the experts I put on pedestals all said, no, that this idea of how I wanted to connect with women, they thought it wouldn't work and they thought I wouldn't therefore make them any money.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But can I ask you a question real quick? How did you go from the aha to starting? So what did that look like? Because I think if you're in this space where you have this thing about catering that you just can't get it out of your head. You want to do these events. You've never actually done this because you had never done anything with makeup. You had no idea what you were doing. You have an idea and you have an aha moment. What was the first thing that you did to start to make this real?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So leaning on that, why I had to do it and why I felt like it was going to be part of my purpose was a big thing that helped me actually take the risk, quit my job.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait, you quit your job because you had an aha moment?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, it was deep. I was like, if I had all of it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What did it feel like?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: It felt like if I didn't do it, I would wake up the rest of my life with this pain in my gut, this longing knowing I was created for more. And it felt like if I didn't do it, I would have the pain of regret. And if I did do it, I might have the pain of failure and maybe the pain of embarrassment and then maybe the pain of, oh, wow, that doesn't feel like it went how I thought it was. I knew it was this big risk. I knew I was leaving what I thought was my dream job.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why did you have to quit your job? Just curious.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: It was literally from day one, I was all in. Like I dove all in. I knew if I was going to do this, I needed to just go all in on it. I do not recommend this, but I started working like 100 hour weeks from the beginning. I was so freaking passionate about it. Like I couldn't stop thinking about what if I can actually figure this out? What if I can literally, because it became a big dream.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So did you have any savings? Like do you have a little bit of savings?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Very little savings.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because you didn't pay yourself for the first three years that you did this.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: First three years. So basically my husband and I wrote this business plan, right? Quit our jobs, dove all in, in our living room. We poured all of our savings into it. I thought if I can figure the product out, it's going to be huge. Right. And then I realized like, oh, being an entrepreneur or launching a dream is not always that easy. We put every penny we had into it.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And once we actually created a product by, and we were scrappy, if you want to know how to create a product, like you in your kitchen, buying stuff at the grocery store, or how does this even work, right? So researching how are makeup formulations made? Who makes them? What are the FDA regulatory compliance? All the unsexy stuff I know nothing about. Just diving into the research phase of how does this happen?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And then what I learned is that manufacturers are makeup companies' closest held secrets, right? Like closest held secrets. They won't disclose who they work with, but a lot of these big manufacturers work with all the top brands that you see or a handful of them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gotcha. So are you saying that all of the brands and top brands that you see are basically manufactured by a handful of companies?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes. A handful of companies and then some do it in house as well. So what I did was scrappy. I walked into a Sephora. I wrote down the name of every single brand in there, went home. I had no money, right? Cold call every single brand and say like, oh, I'm looking for a really great manufacturer. Could you let me know who you manufacture with? And then they hang up on me, one after another after another after another.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I got this really small brand in a totally different kind of positioning where the girl who answered said, oh, here's who we use, there in New York City, blah blah. So that was my first manufacturer. Reached out to them, had a meeting in person, had no money, poured this idea out to them, they took a risk making me samples, and that's how it started was just really being scrappy and trying to figure it out.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: All of our money had gone into the product development formula and the advisory board of the product. And I thought, okay, now we have a product that works for me, right? This was after hundreds of formula iterations. I thought that was going to be it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So is this like year one or year two? Like how long did this take?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. It took a good first year to get that product. And then what I started doing was sending it to everyone I thought was just going to believe in me instantly. So I sent it to Sephora and Ulta Beauty and all the department stores and all of the online retailers, QVC, which is live television shopping channel. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be huge. Every single one of them said no, after no, after no, after no.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And to your point, it became three years of not being able to pay myself, three years of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of no's, of crying myself to sleep at night.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Were you and your husband like fighting like crazy? Like you should go back to work. You should, but why did we do that? Were you doing that?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You want to know what it was? We still believed in it, but we weren't sure how we were going to make it. It was like friends and family that were like, wait, you quit your job. Are you sure you should have quit your job? Or wait, you still haven't made any money. Like it's been three years, right? So you hear all of this, the voices get so loud. The loudest though were my own self doubt.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You know, sometimes we take a chance and go for something because our gut is telling us to do it. And then all of a sudden you face all this opposition and you start to question, is my gut wrong? Is my knowing wrong?
--:-- Mel Robbins: And there were so many times where I would literally get this another brutal no from, you know, Sephora or QVC or whoever it was. And I would just literally cry myself to sleep. I would pray about it and be like, God, I feel like I'm supposed to be doing this, but nothing is going right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's just pause in that moment. Hold that thought. We got to take a short break for our sponsors. And when we come back, we're going to pick this amazing conversation up with my friend, Jamie Kern Lima.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back, I'm Mel Robbins. I'm here with the founder of IT Cosmetics, the billion dollar brand that Jamie built from scratch on her own and then sold to L'Oreal. She is giving us a master class today on purpose, believing in yourself. So Jamie, your story is incredible, woman. You have left your dream job. You have gotten no after no after no after no after no. How do you stay connected to your intuition in a situation like that? What tool do you have or what advice can you give to somebody who's having trouble hearing what the right decision is in that kind of situation?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. So I think that intuition is like a muscle that we build over time. And I think it's a lifelong journey to really learning how to hear it and to trust it. And one of the greatest tools I think is to go back, think back to times in your life where maybe you had this gut feeling to do something and everyone around you said, don't do it. So you listen to them. You didn't trust yourself. And then think about what happened. Right. And then similarly, go back to a time where everyone was like, oh, no way. No way. And you're like, but I love him. I don't think he's lying. I think his phone really did break five times every weekend. He didn't disappear his phone. Like, right. Think about like that situation when everyone was telling you something and you didn't listen or even your gut was telling you, right. And you didn't listen. And you think back to those times and you start to develop pattern recognition of how it felt in moments in your life when you trusted yourself or didn't and what happened and you get better attuned to what that feels like.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what does it feel like for you in those situations? Can you describe what it feels like for you when you're like, yep, no, that's a no. And what does it feel like for you when you're like, I'm sticking with this?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. Often it's the tiniest of feelings in my gut, right? Some people describe it as like a still small voice. I pray about it. I ask God to give me the answers and I try to live the answers.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do you feel the answers that God gives you? Like, is that what happens for you when you do this? Like right now when I look at you, right? Like I know you're a beautiful soul, right? I just know it. You know it. You feel it. Like, I feel like you have good, like you're good. You know what I mean? It's a feeling, right? And we get these feelings, but so much around us is so loud, you know, and we just learn over time.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And by the way, not to go, this could be a whole other episode, but especially as women from the time we're young, we learn not to trust ourselves. We walk in to our parents fighting and we go, is everything okay? They're like, everything's great. Everything's great. Right. To protect us, we start to learn to doubt ourselves, right? Or, you know, especially as young girls, you learn to make decisions by consensus often with your friends and making other people happy and people pleasing. We're rewarded for pleasing everyone else and almost ignoring what we feel. So if you're someone who's an adult right now going, I don't even know how to hear my gut or trust myself. That's why we've been trained out of learning how to do it, right? So it takes intentionality and really deciding, oh, you know what, I'm going to put in some time, even if it's five minutes a day, just to thinking about moments in my life where I trusted myself or I didn't. And if you don't remember any of them, start now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what you just inspired me to think about? I don't even know if it's possible to do this. But imagine if you could go through the rest of today and only make decisions that align with what you truly want. If you don't want to go to that party tonight, don't go. If a friend asks you something and you feel obligated out of guilt to lend them that thing, don't actually lend them the thing. Eat what you want to eat tonight for dinner. Don't just go to wherever your friends want to go. I think that would be a real eye-opening experiment if you were to do that. And you start building that muscle, right? Some people don't even pay attention to what they actually want to eat for dinner. They're just like, what sounds good to everyone? But to your point, when you start paying attention, then you also start building that knowing of hearing your own knowing.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Do you think it's possible to discover your unique purpose in life if you are not connected and listening to your intention? Intuition, I mean.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's way more likely and you're going to actually discover more than one purpose often if you're really tuned in to your intuition and you're intentional about it. But what I'll say for someone who feels like they can't hear their gut, but they still want to find their purpose. A friend of mine says that you're best positioned to serve the person you once were, right? Trent Shelton, our friend says one day the things you're going through right now will be the things you made it through.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what I would say to someone listening right now is look at something in the past that has broken your heart, that has caused you grief, that has been something that you care deeply about, whether it's positive or negative, that you've gone through, something you care deeply about, or maybe pain you've gone through, something you have made it through. I believe often when we go through the hardest times in our life, it's for one of two reasons. It is to either equip us with the strength we need to carry the weight of our success that's to come, to carry the weight of our purpose that's to come, or we've gone through these horrible unspeakable times, things we would never want to happen to us again in our life, because we're actually going to get our greatest source of fulfillment and purpose by one day helping someone else who's going through them.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: I love that saying that you're best equipped to help the person you used to be.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. Yes. Yes.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Let's go to that moment, Jamie. You're three years in.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You've burned through the money.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You have been told no by everybody. And even though you have leveraged all of the steps that were ordered along the way and like an amazing Denny's waitress, you can talk to anybody. You can hustle. You can figure it out. You have nothing but closed doors in front of you.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And a ton of product and no money.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: What is the turning point?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Why did you not give up?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah. So two big things happened. The first was in the form of a crazy painful rejection. So I thought, no. So we got a call from a big potential investor and very famous for launching all these sort of unknown brands and making them big products we all buy in grocery stores. And, you know, and I thought, and they got ahold of our product. And I thought like, oh, if they invest in A, I'm not going to go bankrupt. B, like they, we can leverage their clout to get in these stores that keep telling me no. Like I had this whole scenario planned out that was like this Pretty Woman moment, right? Where I was like, oh, he's going to save the day. And so we started taking meeting after meeting and it got down to the final meeting with this huge investment firm. It was in person. My husband and I actually flew to the meeting and the head guy was about three feet from me. And his whole team was there. It was awesome. I just presented our whole future product pipeline. And he says, you know, you should be so proud of this product you've created. It's really, really good. But it's a no, we're going to pass on investing in IT Cosmetics. And I was like, okay, can you tell me why? Because I'm so used to hearing no. And I was like, okay, even though really I was devastated.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, yeah. Cause this was supposed to be the meeting where they're like, let's do this.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I was so hopeful and I was so desperate. And he got very quiet and he says to me, do you want to know, you know, do you, or I said, I said, can you tell me why? And he says to me, do you want me to be really honest with you? And I said, yes, please. And he got really quiet. And he's like three feet from me in person. And he says, I just don't think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you with your body and your weight. And when he said that to me, and this is why it was such a big moment for me when he said that to me, first of all, a lifetime of body doubt and self-doubt. Like I remember flooding my body all at once. And when I looked at him, I actually felt no anger toward him. I felt like I was almost like staring my own fear straight in the eye. But when he said those words to me, Mel, and this is when we talk about purpose and intuition, he said, I just don't think women will buy makeup for someone who looks like you with your body and your weight. The second he said that, I felt this feeling in my gut. I can remember it like it was yesterday. This strong feeling that said he's wrong. I felt it. I didn't know how I was going to prove it, but I felt that feeling. And what I realized later when I look back at that moment. This guy, this dude gave me a no, but God gave me a knowing in that moment, in that moment. And I believe every one of us has had someone tell us we're not the right fit or no, or you don't have what it takes. Sometimes we're the ones telling ourselves that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't love you anymore.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes. Right. But if, if you get still and you learn to hear your knowing, I believe which one you listen to? If you listen to the no, all the no's, all the rejections, all the self-doubt, or you get still and listen to your knowing, whether that's from your own intuition, from your creator, from the universe, whatever speaks to you, but we all have it. We all have it. And I believe our life and our purpose and our entire destiny comes down to which one we listen to. Do you listen to the no or do you listen to the knowing?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. I promised a masterclass. That right there is worth a billion dollars. In life, are you going to listen to the know? Or are you going to listen to the knowing inside of you? That's it.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: As somebody who loves you and as your friend, when you shared that story with me and hearing you tell it again right now, I literally go, I'm gonna kill that motherfucker. I go, I have that. My knowing goes, oh yeah. Oh yeah. You think, okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Let me, let me show you. Like it's that, like I get that sort of mojo thing going when somebody says no like that at a moment like that, it's like, I'll show you. And I guess I just got in this moment, sort of this wake up call that my knowing often feels like I'll show you.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You missed out. You'll be sorry. What does yours sound like? And it's almost always true. That's almost always true, right? What does yours sound like?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: I mean, in that case, I was devastated and at the same time had the strong, it was just a piece. Honestly, in that moment, it was a piece he's wrong. And that didn't make sense in my head. Why? Because I had had three years of hundreds of rejections. And this is the thing, right? Jay-Z says the genius thing we did was we didn't give up. That's like one of my favorite quotes of his. In that moment, everything told me to give up, Mel. I mean, it was hundreds of rejections. And now it felt like my last hope of desperation told me something totally different. No, because not only do I not believe in anything you're doing necessarily, but I actually just think you're personally not the right fit. Women just won't buy makeup from me. It was just like, oh my gosh, all of these no's everywhere. And I want to share that because, you know, it's easy for someone to go, oh, wow, she built a billion dollar company. She must have just got lucky. Or maybe she just had so many connections. But really what it comes down to sometimes in this case, that big moment for me, do you listen to the no's or do you listen to the knowing, right? And I made that decision that day to trust the knowing, to trust myself. I kept feeling like I was supposed to keep going. I didn't know how, right?
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you do when you don't even know the next step? So you got this kind of, you know, jerk who's like, yeah, I'm not going to buy it because of your body type and this, that, and the other thing. You're like, yeah, you're wrong, motherfucker. But what do you do next? And so the next right step, the next thing that feels right when you can't even see how the heck it's going to work out. How do you even determine what the next right step is?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, you just get, for me, I just get still. I pray, you know that. I pray and I just, but whether for you, you know, listening, it's prayer or it's the universe or your intuition. When you get still, all you can do is try to listen, right? And try to live that answer, whatever it is, and take that next right step. And I just felt, I just had this knowing I was supposed to keep going. And even when it didn't make sense. And, you know, I remember crying myself to sleep. I remember writing in my journal, know your why, then fly, girl, fly. And I read those words every day till I didn't need the reminder. I would Google stories of people that had gone through thousands of rejections who no one would know that they went through them because they're so successful today. Or, you know, and I just kept trying to sort of build this toolbox of things I could lean on.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How did QVC come about? Because you built IT Cosmetics and it became, because of you, the most successful beauty brand on all of QVC. You did over a thousand appearances.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So how did you even get onto QVC? Because that in and of itself is no small feat.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Well, you know, their head guy of beauty, who's like a legend, had said no to me many times, no, you're not the right fit. And I happened to be at this big beauty expo.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And was this before or after this guy was like, no, we're not investing?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: After.
--:-- Mel Robbins: After? So she has now gotten three years of no's. They're almost out of money. Her intuition is knowing that she's going to fly, girl, fly. So she is still showing up to a beauty expo where I want you to understand in the business world, it's like going to a convention where everybody that you have ever fooled around with, who has then broken up with you is attended. So everybody that has said no to her, you know, she walks in and it's like, oh, here's this chick again, the it chick, right?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yep. The cosmetics person that has been sending me the stuff and calling me and we have told her, no, do not make eye contact. This describes it exactly. Everyone, you fooled around with who broke up with you and they're like, oh, don't make eye contact. It's that. Oh God, this chick again with the skin.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So you're at this thing. You've been told no by the big, big, big, big, big person. It's been three years. We're talking like 2011, 2012-ish. What do you do?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So you get this three foot table, right? It's a huge convention. There's 6,000 women at this convention. They're walking up and down and it's every beauty brand in the world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Are they buying it for their stores or?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: No. So what it is, it was this big cosmetic executive women award show.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You get a three foot table. You're demonstrating your product. You're hoping that someone who walks by either wants to carry your product in their stores or all the press is there. They cover your product. And when I got there, I saw QVC had this huge booth in the background and you're not allowed to leave your table, right? I couldn't afford to get kicked out. But I just kept having this feeling like, okay, I've called them a million times. They've told me no forever, but I've never like met anyone in person. Right. So I kept trying to sneak away from my table. And every time I got over there, the buyers would be mobbed with people. I eventually got over there, made my way to one of the buyers, introduced myself, poured my heart out. Like I remember sweat just dripping through my clothes because I was freaking out down to no money. I'll cut a real long story short, but she gave me her card. And you know it's like when someone says oh dm me on Instagram, you don't know if they really mean it. Then you're on your Instagram checking your DMs and you're like, oh they still haven't replied. And I thought is that what it's going to be like? But she actually meant it. And I flew out, had a meeting with her, we got a yes, my first big yes, for one shot on QVC. And what it meant, Mel, was I was going to get this 10 minute segment live on the air, live in front of 100 million homes. And I either had to sell enough product to hit their sales goal or not come back. We were only doing one to two orders a day on our website.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. One to two orders a day, everybody. After three years of this.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And barely keeping the lights on. And so now you get this, you get your shot. There are those moments in life.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're at bat.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yep.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And you got to be ready for those.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so put us right there with you. What happened?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. What happened was I was about to learn one of the greatest life lessons I've ever learned to this day. Here's what I mean by that. So I found that I get one shot and I had to sell over 6,000 units of our concealer in this 10 minute window to hit their sales goal or not come back, which was about like $130,000 or $140,000 a product in a 10-minute window.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I also want to point out to everybody, that's 10 years of sales on her website at the current amount. So in 10 minutes, everybody, she on live television has to move 10 years worth of volume she was selling on her website at that time. In one shot.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: In one shot. And she'd never done this before. I realize you were a television anchor, but this is a totally different thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, QVC, it's, I mean, you know, it's unlike stores where you can walk in and there's thousands of products in one space. Their one minute airtime can get one product. So you're competing with the volume of like Apple iPhone or Dyson vacuum. You have to hit these highest sales goals. And what I quickly learned was the offer was consignment, which meant I wasn't guaranteed to be paid for it. I had to figure out how to get a loan to cover the cost of manufacturing 6,000 units of product, shipping it in, going through legal, going through QC, going through all of it. And then I learned if I go on air and it doesn't sell, I have to take it all back and therefore go out of business, right? So you should never, ever, ever accept a purchase order you can't afford to lose. But at this point, it was like, I don't know what else to do. This is it. This is the shot. This is it. And so here's what happened. We went to 22 banks that all said no, and they probably should have. The 23rd bank, which was California Bank and Trust, gave us a loan that covered our very first purchase order and a little bit more. So I took the little bit more. We hired third-party consultants. I'm like, I'm going all in. I want to do the best 10 minutes I could possibly do. I want to have no regrets. And they all told me the same thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Which is?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Which is, if you want a chance at making it, here's what you need to do. You need to use this type of model to demonstrate your product, which is flawless skin, early twenties, all the same skin tone. And I'm like, okay, but that's inauthentic. That's not why I'm building this brand. I'm like, what if I put models in their seventies and then, and someone with hyperpigmentation and someone with acne. And what if I take my own makeup off on national TV and I could prove live how the product works? And they were mortified. And here's the thing, Mel, they wanted me to win. And like, they were giving me the best advice that they know how.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Did people say, wait, you can't take them on the air? Or was there any like, were people like, oh, she's got, this is just going to be terrible. Like, what was that like when you walked in? Did they even know you were going to take your makeup off?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, I let them know I wanted to. And QVC was great. They want everyone to be their authentic selves. It's just, this has never been done this way before.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And I wish I could say it was easy for me to just go, I'm just going to go with my knowing. But the truth is, I flew out there a week early, Mel. I sat in a rental car in the parking lot, cried every day. I actually second-guessed myself. I'm like, if I do it, maybe I'll do it their way first. Then I'll make money. Then I'll do it my way. But I know that you can't fake authenticity. And authenticity alone doesn't automatically guarantee success. But what I do know is inauthenticity guarantees failure every time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, everybody, stop. The professor class is in session. Did you hear that? That inauthenticity, being fake, trying to do something everybody else's way because you're too insecure to do it your way, that never guarantees success. Yeah, authenticity, your knowing, your special spin on things, that is the pathway to purpose and success. And so after a week of crying in your rental car in the parking lot at QVC, you were like, I'm going with the knowing. I'm going with the knowing. And so tell us about that first appearance. You standing there on a television set. There's a bazillion cameras. The lights are bright. You got your models there. You're taking the risk of your lifetime on live television in front of 100 million homes.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You were doing something that has never been done on television before.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. I remember literally I wore two pairs of Spanx, Mel, not because I cared how I look, but like I was so freaked out. Like my hands were shaking and I was sweating through my clothes. So I had on double Spanx under my dress. And I remember the moment the camera went live, right? And there's a big countdown clock on the floor that started at 10 minutes. And by the way, a minute or two before I went onto the set, I learned you're not guaranteed your 10 minutes.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: If you are a minute or two into your sell and you're not hitting numbers, they know by the second. Your clock, you might think you have eight minutes still to go and your clock will jump to one or jump to two minutes left. Because your product's a flop.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yep, exactly.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: And you're a flop. So you literally are racing against the clock to be successful out of the gate.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what did you do to like hook everybody? Did you take your makeup off right away? What did you do?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So first of all, I go out of the, you know, I go live. I remember it was like 9:59, 9:58, 9:58. And I remember I had practiced in my bathroom mirror, right? So many times. If I had known the high five habit, then I would have been way more confident. But I was practicing in the bathroom mirror, this demonstration a million times on my wrist, how our concealer doesn't crease and the best two selling concealers crease. And I'd done this demonstration like this, where I show it and they all start to crease. So I'm holding my wrist up, trying to do this as we go live. But my hands like this now, and it was never like shaking when I was doing it a million times.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wouldn't bend, everybody. Like she was so anxiety ridden that she's sweating through her Spanx and her wrist will not bend. So she cannot demonstrate that her product won't crease.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes. And the host grabbed my wrist and was like, thank you, sugar. And she took over. And then I remember my bright red bare face before shot coming up on national television. I remember walking over to our models, real women, all shapes, sizes, skin tones, skin challenges, calling them beautiful, meaning it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So when did you take your makeup off? When she grabbed your hand and said thank you sugar, yeah, yeah, did that wake you up or were you like?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: I was like out of my body. I was just praying.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Did you like just then take your makeup off?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Well, they did a whole bare face before shot of me for that show. I have taken it off live a million times since that first show. It was like yeah, bare face before shot and then the after. I remember we were gosh six or seven minutes in. I didn't know how we were doing, but I knew we weren't cut yet. And then it got down to like a minute left. And the host said, the deep shade's almost gone. The tan shade's almost sold out. And I was like freaking out. And I remember literally right at the 10 minute mark, this giant sold out sign came up across the screen. And I start crying on national television.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, I love you.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: They cut from me and went to like Dyson vacuum or something. And I remember my husband came rushing through the double doors of the studio. And he's like has his arms up and I'm just sobbing and I'm like real women have spoken and I'm just like crying. And I thought he was gonna give me a hug or be all excited and he just looked at me and he's like, we're not going bankrupt. And I was like, and I just that one airing which was September of 2010 became five more that year, then 101 the next year, and then I did 250 live shows a year myself, direct live on QVC year after year. So we built the biggest beauty brand in QVC's history. And the only reason that I share that is because it was years of no, and you're not the right fit. And what I love for anyone listening who needs to hear this is no one can tell you you're not the right fit. No one. And you can get all the no's in the world, but you have your knowing. And, and, and, and by the way, I believe this, Mel. I believe even when you trust your knowing, and then it seems like it was wrong and things don't go your way over and over and over. Like I look back at those moments, right? I really wanted that investor to invest in us. Thank God he didn't. When I say everything's happening for us, what I mean is like, if he, I was so desperate that if he would have invested in us, then I probably would have given him the majority of the company for probably almost no money, right? By the time, many years, six years later, after that day, six years later, when L'Oreal bought this little company that started in my living room for $1.2 billion cash, Apollo and I were largest shareholders. And I look back and it's like, oh gosh, thank God all the no's happened when they did, even when they sucked, even when it felt like it wasn't fair. And I can look at that in many scenarios. Sometimes we don't have some big positive outcome, but we learn a purpose through a no. Right. Right. We learn a calling through a no. We learn a lesson. We build strength. We build resiliency. We appreciate the beautiful moments so much more when we've gone through the tough ones.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So have you ever seen that investor since?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: I have not seen him.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Of course, I asked the petty question. I'm like, have you ever seen him to like twist the little knife in there?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So I heard from him one time ever again, and it was six years later, the day that L'Oreal announced the deal. So because they're a public company, they announced that they had acquired IT Cosmetics, maybe the first woman to hold a CEO title of a brand in their 107-year history. They did the big press release.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So that's kind of surprising. 107 years, L'Oreal, a makeup company. It took them that long to have the first female CEO of a brand?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: I hope they have many more now. That is my prayer. But so they announced it, right? So all of a sudden it was homepage of Wall Street Journal, the press everywhere. And that was the first time and only time since that I heard from that potential investor.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what did he say?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: He said, congratulations on the L'Oreal deal. I was wrong. Is what he said. And wished me the best of luck.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's a big deal to admit you're wrong.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: It is. And so when you speak about petty, what I did say to him was thank you, but what I wanted to say, like, what did you want to say? So in that moment, here's what I thought about. I thought about, do you remember the movie Pretty Woman where like she goes in the store and they wouldn't help her? And then she goes back. Remember when she goes back?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: So I wanted to say to him, big mistake, huge, huge. I could give you 1.2 billion reasons why it was a huge mistake. But I didn't. I wouldn't have wanted to be him in that situation. You know, we probably would have been one of the most successful investments in this firm's history. So I always say rejection is God's protection so often.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, there's another one, everybody. Rejection is God's protection.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, it's a good way to frame it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I think when you look in the rearview mirror, you know that all the rejections you've faced, especially in relationships, were there to protect you. I think the true thing that you've taught me through your story and through the example that you continue to set, Jamie, is that true power and grace and grit and belief is about seeing that in front of you, not behind you. That the rejections that you're facing right now, that you can look ahead and realize it's protecting you in this moment. After doing something so extraordinary, and you also have made a huge difference in women's lives around the world because you are extraordinarily philanthropic. $40 million worth of product and monetary donations to people that are struggling with cancer, what is next for you?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because you are right now in the middle of figuring out on this next leg of the journey called life, what your purpose is and what your next thing is going to be. What tools are you using or how are you thinking about it? So many people, particularly after the last three years, have had a profound life change thrust on them, and they're looking ahead at an open road wondering what their purpose is going to be, what they're going to do. Can you just speak to that person for a minute about how you're going about figuring it out?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. So one thing I just want to remind everyone too, Mel, because I think people put so much pressure on themselves that their purpose has to be their job or their next job. A lot of times we can be doing a job that's fine. And maybe for family reasons, we need that health coverage and we need that paycheck. And your purpose can be found in the things you do outside of that. There's a lot of ways to listen to that knowing and your gut. And then when it feels right, you know that's aligned with who you're born to be and how you're born to show up in the world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So for me right now, there's that famous thing: just because you can, should you? There's a big part of me now with all these... could I go launch a bunch of businesses? Yes. And what I feel drawn to is literally... because here's the deal. Yes, I've built a billion dollar business. Yes, I have other companies I invest in.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: You also are married and you have two beautiful children.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, a two-year-old and a four-year-old. And you're incredibly devoted to your family.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Well, and here's the thing. It's like, that's all part of my story. But when I look at my real story, meaning the part that ties deeply to my purpose, my real story is a girl who went from not believing in herself to learning how to. So when I wake up in the morning and I think about the things I've done so far, the things I hope for my kids, and how I built a billion dollar business, it was really through seeing women, helping them see themselves and believe in themselves and believe they are worthy and enough. And that's what fires me up every morning. So when I think about what I'm stepping into next...
--:-- Mel Robbins: You wrote *Believe It*, my book about how to go from underestimated to unstoppable, donated all the proceeds. I'm donating all the proceeds throughout 100%. I funded leadership.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Hold on, hold on. Let's just underscore that. So she writes a *New York Times* bestseller, donates all the proceeds from the book.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So you're kind of in this soup of knowing that this is the area where you want to focus the impact, but it's still a fuzzy target, so to speak. As our friend Dean would say, it's a fuzzy target. If somebody kind of has a sense that there's something more, but they haven't had that aha moment yet that you had almost 14 years ago sitting on that television set—"I'm going to make makeup and I'm going to bring real women and I'm going to show my skin and I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to make people think that they're beautiful because they are beautiful no matter what." And you did it. You did it. But if you're in the soup and you don't have the vision yet, is there an exercise or something that you would recommend that we all do while we're waiting for that clarity and that epiphany to strike?
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah. Two things. One, waiting for it to be perfect can be the lowest vibration, biggest excuse. Number one reason why people just never try and never get started. So I think it's rare to ever have complete clarity, like this is exactly perfect for it. And that's why I think two things: I think just taking a step and seeing how it feels is good. Tuning into your knowing. I also think you mentioned our friend Dean. He was saying it's a fuzzy target. He was saying something to me recently about almost like when you're about to aim a bow and arrow and you're about to let go of the arrow. He's like, you can aim and turn it and twist it a few times before you let go of the arrow. It's okay to wait a little bit and just make sure you're going to aim at the right thing. So this year, for example, I've kind of been doing that. I've been saying, how do things feel? I have the gift and blessing of being here with you right now. How does this feel? Feels amazing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, like you, and maybe this is one of the reasons why we have become such dear friends in such a short period of time. And I often say on the show that I truly believe that the best years of your life and the best friendships that you'll have are on the road ahead. But a lot of the reason why we connected so profoundly, even though we are different in many, many ways, is that it goes back to the Denny's waitress. Like at my core, I am still the waitress making money, waiting tables at the Red Rooster Tavern on Scenic Drive in North Muskegon, Michigan. Same as you, stalling because the fryer has now broken and the fried perch is not coming out. And I'm talking to the tourists from Chicago and I'm treating everybody kindly. And I know that all I want to do is impact people's lives that are just got their head down and they don't feel very seen or heard. And I want to make them know that they have it within them to tap into this incredible power inside them to create whatever they want in life.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes. And it starts with believing that you can. And having somebody like you on who has demonstrated that is really important for people to hear. On that topic of friendship, I love so much that you are the friend that people need to your audience. And I'm honored to be the friend for this episode with you to everyone. So I'm honored to be part of that. Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think one of the things that I've learned, and it took me a long time to learn this, is that there is so much success and happiness to go around. And when you lift other people up and you reach out for help, your success comes faster and it's richer.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yes. And it goes back to purpose. It goes back to that knowing and staying connected to your intention and this unique thing that you have to give to the world. It is not only your responsibility in life to stay connected to your knowing. It is your responsibility to advocate for it because only you have seen it in your heart and mind. Of course, your family says no. They don't even though you're talking about because they only know the person that you've been in the past. Of course, the investor is going to say no. Why? Because they only know what they know. Your knowing is yours. And you have to stay connected to it. And you have to keep describing it or advocating for it or explaining it to people so that they can see it too. And it's not until you demonstrate what you see in your own heart and mind by continuing to walk toward it, continuing to talk about it, continuing to believe in it, that it will become a reality. And that's why people say no, because it's your knowing, not theirs. So in a weird way, a ton of no's or a lot of friction or bumping up against things as you're trying, you can't understand why don't people get this? Why isn't this working? It's because it's your knowing, not theirs.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Amazing. You're just the freaking best. And in case nobody else has told you, I want to just make sure that we end by saying that I love you. I know Jamie does too.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: Yeah, I love you also.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And you're worthy of your greatest hopes and your wildest dreams and all the unconditional love in the world and your purpose and worthy of grace. The grace that you want to give yourself on this journey. And we're all in it together. That's the beauty and power of your show also. Like we're all in it together.
--:-- Jamie Kern Lima: We are.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, we are. Well, we believe in you. So get out there and do it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
