Melissa Butler On The Lip Bar, Success, & Her HBCU

Melissa Butler, founder of The Lip Bar, knows what it’s like to experience failure — and on a very public level, too. When her inclusive beauty brand was three years old, she went on a national reality TV show to pitch The Lip Bar to a panel of investors…only to be told that her business would never grow. “They were so mean to us, they were so cruel. They said, ‘One of the big guys would crush you like the colorful cockroaches you are,’” she says in the latest episode of Go Off, Sis, recounting that devastating moment. “A lot of people have praised me for continuing: What gave you the courage to keep going forward? And I tell them: ‘I didn’t start my business for them, so I wasn’t going to end it for them.’”