These Glampreneurs Beat Steep Odds-And Built Fast-Growing, High-Revenue Businesses

From Forbes, Elaine Pofeldt shares stories of successful one- or two-person businesses. If you are interested in independent workers, you should follow Elaine. In this article, she describes some amazing women. She writes:

In 2003, after a surgery went badly awry, Latasha McRae fell into a coma for three weeks. She had to learn how to walk and talk again when she emerged from the coma.
After her rehabilitation, McRae worked in the customer service and data entry fields and earned a B.S. in business management from University of Phoenix. Over time, she realized what she had really loved, since she was a little girl, was makeup. One day, while going through her makeup bag, she decided she was ready to build a business around that passion. “I’m supporting everyone else’s cosmetics company—why not start my own?” she asked herself.
She took the leap and started her online retail business Peeks Cosmetics in 2014. With help from family, she invested a couple of thousand dollars to get started. Her Orlando, Fla.-based site now sells eyeshadow, lip gloss, lipsticks and other staples of the well-stocked makeup kit. McRae has found that her skills from her previous work helped her. “You have to have customer service skills and talk with people,” she says.
One thing that allowed McRae to grow the business quickly was a decision not to reinvent the wheel. She orders the makeup from a factory in New York and puts her own label on the products she has customized, an approach that is far more efficient than trying to make everything herself. One new release this season is the“Santa Baby Lip Blaster Collection,” a set of liquid lipsticks that will sell for $42.
Like the Leung sisters, McRae developed a strong desire to give back, owing to her life experiences. A portion of the proceeds from a line of lavender-tinted “Lupus Awareness” products she sells go to the Lupus Foundation, a cause that is important to her because a family member has the autoimmune disease.
So far, McRae, 36, does everything at her one-woman operation, from answering emails to picking inventory. She is growing the business by holding events at local venues, such an annual beauty popup, and a Cyber Friday discount promotion, shared through her Facebook site. Her efforts are paying off. McRae projects $1.5 million in revenue this year.
McRae has found that overcoming a life-threatening experience has helped spur her determination as a business owner. “You have to believe in yourself and keep going,” she says. “No one is going to see your vision and your dreams better than you do. You have to push forward.”

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