Thrive Causemetics: Karissa Bodnar. How $150 a Day in Sales Turned into a $150 Million Beauty Business with a Mission

I would have given you my left arm and I am left-handed to be carried at Sephora, Nordstrom, Ulta, anthropology. I mean, I was I was pitching to everybody, QVC, and they they didn't really see the vision of of what I was creating. There were many days where we had no sales. Having an $150 revenue day, I felt like an absolute baller. And so I was, I was funding the production through working my full-time job and I wiped out my entire life savings.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how Carissa Bodner turned a purpose-driven side hustle into Thrive Cosmetics, a multi-million dollar beauty company. The beauty business is huge and it's incredibly crowded. There are thousands of brands selling mascara and eyeliner and lipstick and lots of them are really good. So for a new brand to break through, you need to give people a reason to notice you.

And for Carissa Bodner, that reason came in 2013. Carissa had worked at a Sephora store for a few years and then landed a job at L'Oreal working in product development. And while she was there, one of her closest friends from college died from cancer. She was just 24 years old, and that really shook Carissa, and it got her thinking about what she really wanted to do with her life.

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