CEO & Founder of Self Love Beauty, Lisa Thompson shares her story to starting Self Love Beauty to start our #SheBelievedSheCould series…
My intern told me that the start of the #SheBelievedSheCould series had to start with me. I stared back her as I realize the whole reason Self Love Beauty started was because I started to believe in myself.
But for me to tell you my whole story, I need to take you back to senior year of college in 2011. I can see the moment perfectly, walking from my bedroom down the hall where my other two roommates lived. I brought up the idea of a blog and naming it Self Love Beauty but like anyone in college, the opinion of others, especially those closest to me mattered.
We toyed around with the name for a little bit before deciding that Self Love Beauty was the best. To this day, I really can’t tell you where that name came from, maybe it was the man above just setting his adventure out for me.
The Transition of Life
Fast forward eight months, the wordpress blog was started with nothing written still. I was a 21 year old woman who had graduated from college and received a job right away. I was excited for the adventure and scared.
Like most 21 year olds, I had dreams and goals, I wanted to find the guy of my dreams, have cute kids, own a house, have a successful job and all the glamorous things you see on TV. I wanted it all and I wanted it in the perfect timeline I had set out for myself.
At this age, I also struggled with the new part of my life. Learning to love myself, not be taken advantage of by guys, find new friends in the new place I was making a home while all my friends where still partying every week day. I basically was trying to find myself. Lastly, I had gained some weight to top of this life with a big cherry on top of the big ice cream I was eating [literally!].
At this point it had been a year since I thought of the name Self Love Beauty and I was offered an opportunity to move for my company. I’ll never forget this day, it was a day that I still remember. I called my dad, crying, like when I say crying I was bawling my eyes out because I had a choice to make. I had to choose to take this position and go to another scary place. Unlike the last place, this place was more than a 24 hour drive away and a plane ride away. We both agreed I would give it a shot and it was probably part of God’s plan.
I finally started…
This is when I started to pick up the computer and decided that it time I started writing about my struggles. It’s funny looking back at your first post when it was literally one paragraph long and labeled ‘Welcome’. From the beginning I shared that I wanted this to be a platform that would be open to anyone to help with self-love and advice.
My stories started about my journey to this new adventure in my life and what my current ‘feels’ were. Let’s just say looking back at my first posts and the type of life I was living, I had ZERO idea what I was doing and I realized the value I put on myself was based the opinion of others.
After making the decision to move, I started this adventure. I got in the car with my parents, leaving my friends in the dust, a guy I thought loved me and the comfort of my life.
After a month in my new home, I knew I needed to make some changes. I had to make new friends, get comfortable with the uncomfortable and feel better about by body and self-worth. In my head a new place meant a restart and that all the emotions and things left in Michigan would just wash away. How wrong was I?
As much as I could just change every feeling I wanted to wash away, I put the effort in to get a personal trainer, found new amazing friends and really try to understand God’s plan for me.
Nothing is ever perfect and I had many moments of crazy dates, feeling I wasn’t the best at my job and finding friends who fit with who I was.
Overtime I decided to start writing about it even more. I become in love with writing, actually my love for writing came at a very young age. I wrote more and more. Eventually the life I was living was evolving to become beautiful and I realized that my journey to self-love and worth was growing, never easy or perfect, but growing.
The start of the impact…
After moving back from my adventure only 6 months later, I continued to write and each time, I would have someone reach out saying ‘thank you for sharing’ or ‘it is good to know I am not alone’.
But my story is one, and I knew the more women I had write for Self Love Beauty the more impact it would be. Actually if I am being completely honest, dreaming at night is when these things really come to life for me.
I started reaching out to people and overtime I started to grow Self Love Beauty by writers. We had voices of different self-love journeys all being showcased so more women could relate and be impacted.
And that’s when I knew Self Love Beauty needed to be bigger than I had imagined. I reached out to a mentor from a past experience for advice and he told me that I should probably not think I could ever make that something bigger that blogging was a fad and it would fade.
I guess he didn’t know the girl he was dealing with.
That set me up to want to try even harder to see Self Love Beauty grow but the most important piece of this whole journey and growth of this business is because I believed in myself and those around me to make it possible.
I Believed I Could So I Did
In 2013 was the year I brought on writers, in 2016 I started a Beautiful Me collection of clothing, in 2017 I started the Beautiful Me campaign & Ambassador program and in 2018 I started a podcast and now speak to young girls and women about self-love.
Throughout the years, I wanted to quit. Starting a business from just a blog is a lot of work. Between emails, questions, creation and the list goes on, you can fold into complete exhaustion but believing in a brand like this has become my purpose and passion.
“She Believed She Could So She Did” was one of the very first sayings we put in our collection in 2016 and to this day I still am reminded that if you believe in yourself you can do anything.
Life is a Rollercoaster
If you look at the girl in 2012 to 2018, life has been nothing more than a rollercoaster. Sometimes I am going up and down and side ways super fast and other times it is a calm moment after or before a storm. It has been nothing short of an imperfect journey, but it is my journey.
Believing in yourself is one aspect of your life to always think about. This brand is continuing to grow because of the hard work and dedication put in every week.
The purpose of my journey is still unfolding but the more I become clear of my worth and love myself , the more I realize if you believe it is possible..it is.
I cannot wait to see the impact Self Love Beauty continues to make because you bet we still have many creative ideas up our sleeves.
