How to Find Your Purpose and Achieve Your Dreams With Jamie Kern Lima | The Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  'Our steps are ordered': every job adds to your toolbox

  Kern Lima waited tables at Denny's, where the kitchen took an hour to get pancakes out, so she learned to keep customers talking. Some left a dime and a penny. Years later, it taught her to get operations right or nothing else matters. She also pushed grocery carts and sliced deli meat to pay for school. Mel, a former waitress herself, adds that service jobs teach you no work is beneath you.

• 02

  Setbacks are often setups

  Living her dream as a TV news anchor in Seattle at 28, Kern Lima's rosacea started breaking through her makeup on live air, and producers told her through her earpiece to wipe something off her face. She spent her small paycheck on department-store, professional and drugstore makeup and nothing worked. That frustration became the idea for IT Cosmetics.

• 03

  Purpose usually isn't a job title or a big goal

  People who reach a long-held goal often find 'this isn't it.' Kern Lima says purpose is often serving the person you once were: becoming the generational cycle-breaker in your family, or saying hi to someone lonely in a coffee line. Her purpose wasn't being an entrepreneur but helping women feel worthy as they are. She notes only about 5% of IT Cosmetics customers had skin issues like hers. The other 95% simply felt seen.

• 04

  Your strongest clue to purpose is what hurt you and how you got through it

  Her 'aha' came on the news set: she'd never seen a model with red, bumpy skin selling makeup, and the airbrushed ads she loved had always made her feel not enough. She decided to use real models of every age, size, skin tone and skin challenge and to 'call them beautiful and mean it.' Mel credits her with starting the real-beauty movement around 2007-2008, when everything was airbrushed and there were no curvy models.

• 05

  'Someone's already done it' is false, because no one has done it your way

  There's only one of you, so anything authentic you make has by definition never been done. The flip side, she warns, is to expect lots of rejection, because experts can't picture something new.

• 06

  The pain of regret outweighed the pain of failure

  She quit her anchor job to go all in, sensing that otherwise she'd wake up every day for the rest of her life with a 'longing' in her gut. She and her husband wrote a business plan and put all their savings into it, working from their living room. She worked 100-hour weeks, which she does not recommend, and didn't pay herself for three years. Retailers including Sephora, Ulta, department stores and QVC all said no.

• 07

  Build intuition like a muscle by looking for patterns

  Look back at times you ignored your gut because everyone disagreed, and times you trusted it, and notice how each felt and what happened. For her it's a tiny feeling, a 'still small voice,' and she prays about it. She says girls often learn early to distrust themselves, decide by consensus and people-please. Mel suggests trying to make only decisions that match what you truly want for the rest of the day, from parties to dinner.

• 08

  A 'no' versus a 'knowing'

  After meeting after meeting, the head of a big investment firm told her, about three feet away, 'I just don't think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you, with your body and your weight.' She felt no anger, just a strong gut sense that he was wrong. 'This dude gave me a no, but God gave me a knowing.' Her line: your destiny comes down to which one you listen to.

• 09

  Inauthenticity guarantees failure

  Kern Lima's version: authenticity doesn't guarantee success, but inauthenticity guarantees failure every time. Mel adds that it's your job to keep advocating for your vision, because only you have seen it. Family and investors say no because they only know who you've been.