, and for about three years she stayed on as CEO of IT Cosmetics, which made her the first female CEO in L'Oreal's history.
But the rags to riches story is not the whole story. The truth is that Kern Lima experienced years of rejection, setbacks and was down to her last $1,000 at one point before her "fairytale" success. To move forward, Kern Lima learned she had to take it all in stride. Kern Lima remembers one male investor told her that he didn't believe women would buy makeup from someone who looked like her, "with her body and weight."QVC declined to sell IT Cosmetics for three years and Sephora said no for six years."Learning how to not take rejection personal, it's so critical," Kern Lima says.
Every time she received a no, Kern Lima would respond to the merchant as if it was going to be a yes one day. "I would literally follow up with an email thanking them and saying I can't wait for the day that we're in your stores." Then she would follow up any time IT got press or had a new product launch.
"Often experts who mean well haven't actually created or built anything themselves. And, though they may believe they are visionaries, they often aren't able to imagine the success of something they haven't seen before," Kern Lima says in her new memoir,
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