Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable by Jamie Kern Lima

I had absolutely no idea who Jamie Kern Lima was before I picked up Believe IT. By the time I finished it, I was hooked. Jamie is the co-founder of IT Cosmetics, the beauty company she built with her husband, Paulo, before it was acquired by L’Oréal for $1.2 billion. But it wasn’t the billion-dollar success story that interested me most. It was how many times she was underestimated before she got there.

Jamie has rosacea and writes about being told that she didn’t have the right look to sell beauty products. Investors and people within the industry questioned whether women would buy make-up from somebody who looked like her. Isn’t that sad?

Here was a woman creating products for people with real skin concerns, yet her own skin was apparently a problem because she didn’t fit somebody else’s idea of what a woman selling beauty should look like.

When the thing you’re told to hide becomes your strength

The moment in Jamie’s story that really stayed with me came when she appeared on QVC. Rather than covering her rosacea and presenting the usual image of perfect skin, Jamie went on live television bare-faced and demonstrated what her products actually did. She showed women her real skin, and the products sold out.

I loved that because the very thing people had suggested made her unsuitable to represent a beauty company became one of her greatest strengths. Women watching could see somebody who actually had skin concerns demonstrating a product designed for people like them.

There is a great leadership lesson in that. We can spend an enormous amount of energy trying to look, behave or sound like the person we think a successful leader is supposed to be. Sometimes the thing that makes us different is actually the thing that makes people trust us.

Being told no doesn’t mean they’re right

Jamie faced years of rejection while building IT Cosmetics. There were financial pressures, people who didn’t believe in the business and plenty of reasons she could have decided the experts must know better. She kept going.

Of course, good leaders need to listen to criticism. Sometimes somebody telling you that an idea won’t work is giving you information you desperately need to hear. But sometimes they’re simply wrong. I think one of the hardest things in business is learning to recognise the difference.

Jamie’s story is particularly powerful because we now know what happened. L’Oréal acquired IT Cosmetics for $1.2 billion in 2016. Looking backwards, success can seem almost inevitable. Reading Believe IT reminds you that it wasn’t.

Faith when nobody else believes

Jamie’s faith in God is also a huge part of the book and of how she explains her ability to keep going. I found that interesting because belief is relatively easy when everything is working. It’s much harder when investors are saying no, money is tight and the people who supposedly understand your industry are telling you that you don’t belong.

Her faith gave her something to hold onto before she had the external evidence that the business was going to succeed. Whether or not you share Jamie’s religious beliefs, there is an important question here for anyone in leadership:

What keeps you going before everybody else believes in you?

Because if you’re building something new, there will probably be a period when they don’t.

A few leadership lessons I took from it

There were several things I came away from Believe IT thinking about.

• Don’t automatically turn somebody else’s rejection into your own self-doubt.
• Don’t assume the most experienced person in the room is necessarily right about you.
• Don’t change yourself simply to fit somebody else’s idea of what a successful founder or leader should look like.
• And perhaps most importantly, don’t underestimate the power of showing up as yourself.

Jamie’s eventual breakthrough came when she stopped hiding the very thing she’d been told was a weakness. I think there’s something rather brilliant about that.

About Jamie Kern Lima

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Jamie worked as a television news anchor. She co-founded IT Cosmetics in 2008 and went on to become the first female CEO of a brand in L’Oréal’s history following the company’s acquisition.

She has since become an author, speaker and investor. Believe IT: How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable was published in 2021 by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

My verdict

★★★★★ 5 out of 5 stars.

I didn’t know Jamie Kern Lima before reading this book, but I found her story fascinating. Yes, building a company that eventually sells for $1.2 billion is impressive. But what stayed with me was the woman with rosacea being told she wasn’t the right face for a beauty company, then going on television bare-faced and showing women exactly why her products existed.

There is a lesson in there for all of us. If you’re building a business, leading people, starting something new or have ever wondered whether you really belong in the room, Believe IT is worth reading. Sometimes being underestimated isn’t the end of the story.

It might just be the beginning.