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Many entrepreneurs launch beauty startups because they see a glaring gap in the market. It’s only after they’ve formulated their products and launched them that they learn how incredibly difficult it is to turn a profit as a beauty business. That wasn’t the case for Tisha Thompson, founder of LYS (short for Love Yourself), a clean cosmetics brand that is inclusive to all skin tones. Since launching the line in 2021, Thompson has grown LYS’s sales to upward of $10 million. And she did so in a counterintuitive way: by building a bootstrapped brand that launched immediately into Sephora with just $500,000 in startup capital. Thompson’s success is remarkable, particularly because many other Black founders in the beauty industry are struggling. This summer, the popular makeup brand Ami Colé shuttered after three years in business. Founder Diarrha NDiaye-Mbaye says she wasn’t able to find enough capital to stay afloat. Many other Black-owned beauty brands, including Beauty Bakerie, Ceylon, and Koils by Nature, have also been forced to close. For Thompson, it’s important to offer a counterpoint to these stories, and to show retailers and investors that it is possible to succeed as a Black-owned brand that targets Black consumers. “There’s this narrative that Black-owned businesses are failing, and that’s really unfair because there are many white-owned businesses that are also failing,” she says. “Every brand has its own story, and I just want to show that a Black-owned business can be profitable. I want to tell the industry: Don’t give up on us.” [Photo: LYS Beauty] Identifying A Gap In The Market Thompson has always loved makeup. As a teenager, she would spend gym class doing makeovers for her friends instead of running laps. But when she started her career in the beauty industry, she began to see that many companies did not seem to value her as a consumer. “For so long, makeup has left people who look like meplus-size black womenout of the conversation,” she says. “They were not marketing to us at all.” As she was coming up in her career, the clean beauty industry was taking off, and she got a job at Pür, a brand that formulates products without toxic ingredients. Brands like Beautycounter and retailers like Credo highlighted how unregulated the beauty industry is, and how many questionable ingredients are in our products. But it always struck her that the clean beauty industry was not targeting Black women. [Photo: LYS Beauty] “They didn’t prioritize women of color in their strategy,” Thompson says. “They were predominantly marketing around an older white woman and selling products at a higher price point.” Thompson realized there was a gap in the market for a more inclusive clean makeup brand. But knowing how expensive it is to launch a beauty company, she didn’t think she was in a position to start one. “I don’t come from money, and I don’t have access to money,” she says. “It seemed like an impossible dream.” Then in 2019, Thompson’s father died, and this changed her calculation. She decided to take the plunge and began writing up a business plan. “Sometimes when something traumatic happens, you lose your rational thinking,” she says. “I realized life is short and I might not be here tomorrow. So I decided I would try to be the change I wanted to see in the world.” Getting to 8-Figure Revenue Before launching LYS, Thompson had spent 15 years in the trenches of the beauty industry. She was a makeup artist at MAC, ran marketing for Pür Cosmetics, and handled finances at the beauty conglomerate Astral Brands, which owns Butter London. “My superpower today is understanding the finances of the beauty industry,” she says. “Beauty is a very expensive business, and to run a company you need to understand all the detailsfrom the cost of goods to sales to operations.” Launching a beauty brand requires spending money on formulation, packaging, and inventory, as well as on marketing to get the word out. Many beauty founders start to raise money as soon as they have an idea. But Thompson was a lot more conservative about taking money because she knew that investors tended to prioritize growth and scale, which could make it hard to become profitable. Thompson poured the small inheritance her father left her into this startup. She also found an angel investor who was willing to put some money into the business. But this amounted to less than half a million dollars, far less than many other beauty brands. [Photo: LYS Beauty] Then she did something a little crazy. To get the brand out into the world, Thompson realized she needed the help of a retailer like Sephora. Since she didn’t know anybody at the company, she decided to reach out cold. “I basically drunk-texted ephora,” she says. “I had a glass of wine one night, went on LinkedIn to find a merchant, and sent them my deck of slides about the brand. I thought it would go into a deep dark hole, but 10 days later, I got an email back from Sephora saying they’d love to talk.” Like Thompson, Sephora’s merchants identified that most clean brands weren’t targeting the Black consumer, and they thought her business idea was smart. So they signed her up to sell her products on the Sephora website as a test to see if it had the potential to do well in-store. Thompson used her startup capital strategically, mostly to meet Sephora’s inventory needs. She poured money into formulating products, designing packaging, and manufacturing. [Photo: LYS Beauty] What she didn’t do was spend money on hiring staff or on marketing, which are often major expenses for beauty startups. Instead of spending money on social media marketing, Thompson reached out to 300 influencers who might be willing to promote her brand for free because they believed in her mission. “I had a lot of relationships with creators from my former life,” she says. “I reached out to the most impactful creators who could help me get this brand off the ground, and almost all of them posted a video at launch. YouTube filled up with people promoting the launch of the first Black-owned clean makeup brand at Sephora.” On launch day, LYS blew through four months’ worth of inventory in 24 hours. Sephora quickly decided to launch the brand in its stores. Saying No To Black Lives Matter Money Thompson’s approach was different from many other Black-owned beauty brands that launched during this period. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, many investors began to realize that they had failed to support Black founders and set aside funds to invest in Black-owned businesses. Retailers like Target and Sephora made commitments to devoting more shelf space to Black-owned brands. Many Black founders benefited from this sudden support. Ami Colé’s founder received $1 million in investment very quickly, allowing her to launch in Sephora. Ceylon Beauty, a skincare brand for men of color, received a $50,000 grant from Glossier as part of a program for Black founders. Koils by Nature, a haircare brand, was picked up by Target. But when Donald Trump entered office at the start of this year, waging an assault on companies that were committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, many investors and retailers changed their tune. All of these brands relied on continued funding for working capital, but investors were unwilling to keep supporting them. They’ve all since shut down. During the Black Lives Matter movement, Thompson started receiving calls from investors wanting to fund her business. But she decided to turn them down. She could not possibly have predicted that money would later dry up for Black foundersher reason for rejecting this capital was more practical. She wanted to maintain more equity in her company. “Without scale as a Black-owned business, I knew that you would have to give up more equity than the average brand,” Thompson says. “I looked around and saw these brands giving up a lot more of their company for small chunks of money.” And besides, she didn’t need the money because she had found a way to remain cash positive, without any investment, by keeping her expenses low and pouring all profits back into the business. “I was the only employee for the first two years of the business,” she says. “This was an extremely lean operation.” This year, Thompson realized she couldn’t continue to scale without investment. The brand was already generating upward of $10 million in annual revenue, thanks to its partnership with Sephora. The next frontier was to go international. In March, LYS announced it had received eight figures of funding led by Encore Consumer Capital. While this is a lot of capital, Thompson says the point of raising this money was to find a strategic investor who had connections in international markets. [Photo: LYS Beauty] “This investor has backed Tarte and Supergoop, which are brands that have reached a scale beyond what I am capable of,” she says. “The international market is uncharted territory for LYS, but these investors are able to just pick up the phone and make an introduction to a retailer in Europe or Asia.” Thompson is excited for LYS’s next chapter, as it begins to announce partnerships with department stores and retailers overseas. But just as important, she wants to inspire other Black entrepreneurs to not give up, even though it seems like a bleak time to be a founder of color. “When I was coming up in the industry, I didn’t see a lot of founders like me, and that made me doubt whether I could really do this,” she says. “I want other Black founders to realize that running a successful company is attainable.”
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E-Commerce
The people of New York have spoken. In electing Zohran Mamdani mayor, they voted for generational change, democratic socialism, and joyful pop-culture politics. The historical significance of Mamdanis victory will be parsed for days, weeks, and years to come. But the people of New York did not just elect a mayor, they also voted to change the way housing gets built in one of the tightest housing markets in the United States. Voters passed three ballot initiatives designed to speed up and increase housing production by an even greater margin than Mamdanis victory. With these ballot initiatives, Mamdani also won a huge victoryone he didnt even campaign for, though he did voice his support for the measures the night before the election. These ballot measures will make at least some of his housing policies meaningfully easier to achieve, including his promise to build 200,000 low-income apartments, and his desire to spread housing construction more equitably across the city. Mamdanis victory signified voters hunger for change, especially when it comes to new approaches to reducing the cost of living. The housing ballot measures were yet another indicator of the same phenomenon. Local leaders elsewhere should take note. What New Yorkers Voted For Local media outlets like The City and The New York Times have good explainers on the ballot initiatives. Ill briefly describe the most significant updates here and how they might impact housing in the U.S.s most populous city. Ballot Measure 2 creates a new expedited review and approval process for all publicly funded affordable housing projects, turning what can be an 18-month process into a 3-month process. It also creates a new affordable-housing fast track for all housing projects in the 12 community districts (out of 59 total) that have permitted the least-affordable housing in recent years. These 12 community districts will mostly be more suburban parts of the city in eastern Queens, south Brooklyn, and Staten Island. They are, as it happens, the same parts of the city that supported former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the mayors race. (Cuomo endorsed the ballot measures.) Ballot Measure 3 creates an expedited rezoning and environmental review process for small housing projects and zoning variances. Projects allowed under this policy would generally be limited to 45 feet in height in low-density areas, or a 30% increase over allowed density in higher-density areas. This measure will allow totally new project types that are not currently built in New York, including missing middle housing in low-density zones. Larger projects that require zoning variances will now be able to get them in a quicker process through the nonpolitical Board of Standards and Appeals, rather than the City Council. Ballot Measure 4 creates a new appeals board that gives projects rejected by the City Council another chance at approval. Eligible projects would have to include affordable housing, whether through the citys local inclusionary zoning policy, called Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, or as a city-funded affordable housing project. This measure effectively ends the practice of member deference, in which a single council member can block a project in their district. In sum, these measures will make it much faster to approve all affordable housing projects and many market-rate housing projects; they reduce uncertainty for all housing proposals; they will allow new housing to be built in neighborhoods that have traditionally built very little; and they move power over development away from the City Council and to the mayor and appointed boards like the Planning Commission and Board of Standards and Appeals. Mamdanis vision for housing All of these outcomes correspond to housing policy goals that Mamdani has articulated, including the goal of constructing 200,000 new, union-built, deeply affordable housing units over 10 years. Funding that promiseespecially while sticking with union labor and very deep levels of affordabilitywill be a tall order. But these ballot measures will make achieving this overall goal more of an economic problem than a political one. Getting affordable developments built will not require project-by-project land use battles. Mamdani has also voiced his support for spreading housing production more evenly across the five boroughs, particularly to wealthier neighborhoods. Ballot Measure 2 does exactly that, through its special rules for the NIMBYest community districts, and Ballot Measure 3 moves toward the same goal by opening up new development opportunities in low-density areas. As his campaign progressed, Mamdani emphasized the importance of government efficiency and effectiveness. These ballot initiatives will allow government to act more quickly on its housing goals, spending less staff time and resources on approval processes. The newly elected mayor has also warmed to the idea of market-rate and mixed-income housing being part of the solution to the citys housing crisis. While mostly focused on 100% affordable housing projects, these measures will help market-rate projects, too, by eliminating council member deference and streamlining mixed-income projects in NIMBY strongholds. What these ballot measures will not do is move the needle on Mamdanis signature campaign promise to freeze the rent for rent-stabilized tenants. That action goes through a whole different entitythe Rent Guidelines Boardand comes with a host of legal and political questions. What the ballot measures may do, however, is set the stage for a sort of grand bargain around housing production and tenants rights. By supporting both of these policy goals simultaneously, Mamdani could build his credibility among constituents in both camps. Theres also some evidence that tenants tend to be more supportive of housing development when strong renter protections are in place, as Rogé Karma reported in a recent piece in The Atlantic. Throughout the campaign over the ballot initiatives, the largest opponent was the New York City Council, whose powers will unquestionably be diminished by these new policies. The Councils no campaign relied on the fact that the initiatives were developed by a commission appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, a highly unpopular figure in New York politics. But soon neither Adams nor Cuomo (the candidate Adams endorsed) will be in City Hall. The new powers afforded by these ballot initiatives will be held by a 34-yea old democratic socialist. How will he use them to reshape the city?
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E-Commerce
How I spend my hours in the day is how I live. To make the most of my waking hours, I practice the one-hour rulea simple habit that helps me learn, reflect, and think. I give myself 60 uninterrupted minutes a day to try and become a little wiser than I was yesterday. I consciously take control of my growth to transform how I think, how I decide, or live. It takes commitment. But just an hour a day learning, thinking, and reflecting is helping me improve my life processes. Thats it. Sixty minutes. Five hours a week. And you are upgrading yourself daily. That means reading something that stretches you. Reflecting on what went wrong and why. Sitting in silence and letting your mind wander on purpose. The result is more clarity. Fewer regrets in life. And growth that actually sticks. One focused hour doesnt just change your day. It rewires your direction. And gives your brain time to connect, create, and course-correct. Think week In the 1990s, Bill Gates called his time away to reflect think week. He used seven days of solitude in a cabin in the forest to read, think, and write about the future.This ability to turn idle time into deep thinking and learning became a fundamental part of who I am, Gates said.The logic is timeless. Consistency beats intensity. An hour a day compounds faster than you think. One book a month, 12 a year. Twelve new mental frameworks. Twelve ways you now see the world differently. You dont have to disrupt your schedule to apply the rule. It doesnt have to be one stretch. You can use pockets of time in the day to get the same impact. An hour is long enough to change your life. And short enough to be doable. Its the sweet spot between wishful thinking and practical results. You can learn a new skill, reflect on what went well or didnt go well in the day. Or simply sit and think without your phone. The return of intentional time to learn, think, or reflect compounds in all areas of your life. The three pillars of the one-hour rule 1. Make learning an active process. Feed your brain something worth reflecting on. Your input will always determine your output. What you feed your brain determines how you decide, how you speak, and how you work. But dont just consume, engage. Reading 10 pages means nothing if youre not putting the ideas to use. Dont just collect information, digest it. If you read about negotiation, go try it on your coworker or someone who can give you feedback. Learning sticks when you take action. Try things. Fail forward. Every time you stretch your understanding, you expand whats possible for you. 2. Reflect on the new knowledge. If learning is the input, reflection is the processing system. Its how you turn experience into usable wisdom. We do not learn from experience . . . we learn from reflecting on experience, says philosopher and psychologist John Dewey. Without reflection, youre basically walking in circles. Lots of movement, no direction. What worked? What didnt? What lesson did you take from whats not working? Write it down. Youll start to see patterns. Habits that hold you back. Decisions that move you forward. Thats your personal feedback loop. Reflection turns problems into clarity. Make sense of your day. What could you have done differently? 3. Think to turn learning into wisdom. Most people are too busy reacting to life. They recycle the same opinions, habits, and ideas. Thinking is how you question your perspective on anything. Its you sitting alone with your mind, connecting dots no one else sees. Its letting your thoughts wander. And then following the interesting ones. I like to do this while walking. Something about movement untangles thoughts. Ive solved more problems in sneakers than behind my desk. Thinking gives your brain the room to process ideas. And when it does, it surprises you. Your mind starts connecting dots when you commit to the rule. You will begin to notice patterns in your own habits, at home and at work. That one-hour-a-day habit can help you handle conflict better, do your work better, or live better at home. Try it. One hour for your own transformation. Just you, your curiosity, and 60 minutes of honest focus. Do that long enough, and youll realize you were not just learning for an hour a day. You were rebuilding your entire life. One hour of learning, reflecting, and thinking daily can put you in control of the direction of your life. Thats the power of the hour. Its small enough to start today. And big enough to change your life. Its how you leap ahead.
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