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Karissa Bodnar had a dream job at L'Oréal when a close friend died from cancer at age 24. It shook her up and made her reassess what she really wanted to do with her life. The answer? Build her own beauty business with a mission of “giving back.”
The problem? Nobody seemed to want to carry her products. She pitched Sephora, Nordstrom, Ulta, and others—and kept hearing no.
She stuck it out, pouring tens of thousands of dollars of her own savings into it, and worked a full-time job to fund the formulation of new cosmetics.
Two years in, another life-changing event. Karissa posted a video of herself teaching make-up application to domestic violence survivors, and it went viral. Five years later, the company was making about $150 million a year!
In this episode Karissa explains why mission alone will never save a bad product, how scarcity helped her build a better company, why she resisted raising too much money, and how she turned a deeply personal loss into one of the most distinctive brands in beauty.
What You’ll Learn:
- How Karissa's childhood experimenting with fruits and flowers led her to researching and formulating her own makeup
- How Karissa’s experiences at Nordstrom and Sephora set her up for a plum job in product development
- The importance of attracting an influential mentor or guide to career development, as Karissa did at L’Oreal
- How Karissa developed her unique line — like false eyelashes for people who had lost their natural lashes during cancer treatment
- Why the decision to keep sales DTC and ONLY online can be a great business move
- Why Karissa believes “scarcity drives focus”
- How to handle operations when sales explode
- Why mission helps customer loyalty — but performance drives the initial and repeat purchases
Timestamps:
05:30 – Making makeup in the kitchen at age 10 and Karissa’s first steps into research
08:55 – Learning the beauty business from the ground up
11:22 – How Karissa landed her dream job in product development at L'Oréal
14:48 – The career lessons that got Karissa noticed at L'Oréal
22:03 – How a tragedy made Karissa leave a dream job to start a company “with purpose”
31:36 – The one-person-at-a-time marketing strategy
33:01 – The viral moment that changed Thrive Causemetics
37:06 – Why failing to raise money became an advantage
42:33 – Mission versus product: which really matters?
44:34 – Why Thrive Causemetics stayed direct-to-consumer
This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce with research help from Chris Maccini. Our engineer was Jimmy Keeley.
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