"It was all about pure creativity, pure grit:" Danessa Myricks on creating her beauty empire

As startup beauty brands and newly minted founders emerge almost daily, it's easy to forget that some companies are not made overnight. Take, for instance, makeup artist-turned-founder Danessa Myricks, who has been building her authority in beauty for more than two decades. After a layoff from a publishing company, Myricks decided to change her future by teaching herself how to do makeup.

"I started at [age] 30. I've been doing makeup now for over 20 years, so you get a sense of how old I am," said Myricks on a recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "So back then, there was no Instagram, there was no social media. There weren't all these beauty schools. They weren't masterclasses. There was nothing. You can go to the library, you can buy a book. And so there really weren't resources that way, and [the same for] even in cosmetology school -- not that I had the time to do it because I needed to earn money."

That lack of public access and education led to one of Myricks' first business endeavors. She began to sell makeup DVDs to beauty enthusiasts. "I don't even know anyone who owns a DVD player player right now, but that really was the thing. Early on in my career, I always had a business mindset; I wanted to turn this into a business, [because] it was going to be the thing that I used to feed my family... When one hairstylist asked me if I can come to their salon and teach them and their staff how to do makeup, a bell went off. I was like, 'I can hold little classes.' These sessions started off with, like, five people, and then 20, and it started to grow. I started getting invitations from different hair shows to teach the audience how to do makeup. And I was like, 'Wow, how can I amplify this?' Because I can't be everywhere. I can't go to every show."

In many ways those, original DVDs set the stage for Myricks' cult following on Instagram (she's largely responsibly for the neon trend on social) and her namesake online university, which she launched during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But product development has always been Myricks' true calling, especially with the lack of diverse and inclusive shade ranges she experienced as both a customer and a makeup artist. Today, her self-funded Danessa Myricks Beauty line that launched five years ago experienced 100% sales growth in 2020. It is sold in 50 stores in 13 countries worldwide; this month, it made its foray into Sephora.