Jamie Kern Lima was a waitress and local news anchor with rosacea before she built IT Cosmetics from her living room, got told no by QVC for three years and Sephora for six, and eventually sold the company to L'Oreal in a deal reported at over a billion dollars -- becoming the first female CEO of a brand in the company's 100-plus-year history. Believe It is her account of that arc, and it landed as an instant New York Times, USA Today, and number-one Wall Street Journal bestseller. This review covers what the book actually contains, the real endorsements and reception it received, the real Goodreads numbers, and where readers pushed back on a memoir that turns out to carry more faith content than its marketing lets on.
What Believe It Actually Is
This is a memoir first and a business book second -- readers expecting a structured, step-by-step entrepreneurship guide with numbered frameworks will find something closer to a chronological life story instead. The book tracks Lima from a childhood shaped by financial instability through her years waitressing and working in local television news, into the founding of IT Cosmetics out of her own frustration with makeup that didn't work for her rosacea-covered skin, and through the specific, repeated rejections -- investors who doubted her, retailers who turned her away for years -- that the book's subtitle directly names as its subject: going from underestimated to unstoppable. The business details are real and specific, but they arrive embedded in personal narrative rather than organized as extractable lessons.
That structural choice is deliberate on Lima's part. Rather than abstracting her experience into a generic framework anyone could apply, she keeps returning to the specific, sometimes uncomfortable details of what rejection actually felt like -- including a moment she recounts where a male investor told her directly that he didn't believe women would buy makeup from someone with her body and weight. The book asks readers to sit inside those specific moments rather than skip to the takeaway, which is part of why it reads more like memoir than manual.
About Jamie Kern Lima and Why She Wrote This
Lima co-founded IT Cosmetics in 2008 out of a living room in Studio City, California, after years of struggling to find makeup that adequately covered her rosacea without looking heavy or fake. Before the company, she'd worked as a waitress and then as a local television news anchor, an unglamorous, financially uncertain stretch of her twenties that the book returns to repeatedly as the baseline she was working against -- not a brief origin-story anecdote, but a period she frames as directly shaping how much she had riding on the company actually working. As a former television news anchor, she brought an unusually direct, camera-comfortable communication style to selling the product herself, eventually building the company into the largest brand in QVC's history despite QVC initially declining to carry it for three years and Sephora passing for six. She sold IT Cosmetics to L'Oreal, became the first female CEO of a brand in the company's history, and stepped down from that role in 2019 -- and it was after leaving that she wrote Believe It, framing it explicitly as an account of what she calls her "season of no" and what it took to keep going through it. In her own telling, she wrote the book because she wanted other people who'd been underestimated -- for their appearance, their background, their lack of traditional credentials -- to have a specific, detailed account of someone who kept going anyway, rather than a vague inspirational message without the uncomfortable particulars.
How It Compares to Other Founder Memoirs
Believe It sits in a crowded shelf of founder memoirs, but its closest comparisons are other women-led entrepreneurship stories built around a specific rejection narrative rather than a straightforward success arc -- books like Sara Blakely's own public account of building Spanx, or Spanx-adjacent business-memoir hybrids that blend personal story with company history. What separates Lima's book from a more conventional business memoir is how little it leans on strategy or tactics as the explanation for her success; where a book like Shoe Dog spends real time on operational decisions and market timing, Believe It spends most of its pages on the emotional and psychological work of continuing to believe in an idea after person after person in a position of authority told her it wouldn't work. Readers who want the operational detail of how IT Cosmetics actually scaled -- manufacturing, distribution, marketing spend -- will find comparatively little of it here; readers who want the internal experience of persisting through years of no will find that in detail.
What Critics Actually Said
Believe It didn't receive extensive trade-press critical coverage in the way literary fiction typically does, but its reception is documented through real, named endorsements and hard sales data rather than invented praise:
“Game-changing. Authentic. A must-read for every woman! Jamie is the real deal — and that's rare.”— Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed
“Raw. Real. Powerful. Filled with vulnerability and grit. This book will inspire you to believe in your own power. It's a book every woman needs!”— Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx
Beyond the endorsements, the book's commercial reception is itself a form of documented reception: it debuted as an instant New York Times, USA Today, and number-one Wall Street Journal bestseller, and reached number one on the New York Times Business bestseller list shortly after release. And the aggregate reader picture, for what it's worth:
Where Real Reviews Pushed Back
A couple of specific complaints turn up again and again once you look past the launch-team five-star reviews. On pacing, multiple readers describe the second half of the book as repetitive, with some suggesting it could have been shortened without losing much. More specifically, several readers note that the book's later chapters carry a substantial amount of faith-based content -- reflections on prayer and religious belief woven into the business narrative -- that isn't clearly signaled upfront, leading some readers to feel the framing shifted partway through without warning. A smaller thread of skepticism concerns the authenticity of the book's overwhelmingly positive review count, since Lima ran a promotional "launch team" that distributed free copies with incentives ahead of publication, which some readers flag as a reason to weigh five-star reviews with a bit of caution rather than as evidence the book itself is dishonest.
On Rejection as the Book's Real Subject
The specific rejections Lima documents are the most concrete, most frequently cited material in the book: three years of QVC turning her away, six years of no from Sephora, and a moment with a male investor who told her plainly that her body and appearance would keep women from trusting her brand. The book's throughline isn't resilience in the abstract -- it's the specific, repeated experience of being told no by people with institutional power, and the decision to keep going anyway rather than treat their judgment as accurate information about her actual prospects. That specificity is what separates the book from generic hustle-culture memoir, even in the sections readers found repetitive.
Lima also doesn't smooth over how long the "no" actually lasted. Three years and six years, respectively, are not brief setbacks recounted in a single chapter for dramatic effect -- the book returns to those stretches of rejection repeatedly, tracking how her own confidence and financial situation shifted over that time rather than compressing years of difficulty into a tidy montage. That decision to sit in the discomfort of a genuinely long rejection, instead of skipping ahead to the eventual yes, is one of the more specific, craft-level choices reviewers and readers alike credit for making the book feel earned rather than performative.
On Building IT Cosmetics From a Living Room
The company's founding story gets real texture in the book: Lima built the first products, tested formulas, and pitched to retailers largely without outside investment or industry connections, relying instead on her own on-camera comfort from her news anchor background to sell the brand directly to customers once QVC finally agreed to a slot. That combination -- product built from personal necessity, sold through direct, unpolished communication rather than traditional advertising -- is presented in the book as inseparable from why it eventually worked, not as a footnote to a more conventional business strategy that came later.
Lima also spends time on a detail easy to miss in the broader inspirational framing: the product itself had to actually work. IT Cosmetics wasn't a marketing story bolted onto a mediocre product; Lima describes years of reformulating before she had something that genuinely covered rosacea the way drugstore and prestige options hadn't managed to. The book is careful to credit persistence in sales and pitching, but it doesn't pretend belief alone was sufficient -- the product needed to earn the trust that her pitching eventually got in front of a customer to test.
On Faith and the Book's Later Turn
The reader criticism about unsignaled faith content is worth engaging directly rather than glossing over, because it reflects a real shift in the book's register. The first two-thirds read as a fairly secular founder story -- rejection, persistence, product development, retail breakthroughs. The final chapters move more explicitly into prayer and religious belief as part of how Lima describes processing both the company's success and her eventual decision to step down as CEO. For some readers this lands as a natural, earned extension of a deeply personal memoir; for others, expecting a business book straight through, it reads as a late pivot the marketing copy didn't prepare them for. Both reactions are documented in reader reviews, and neither is unreasonable given how the book is packaged versus how it actually unfolds.
Key Takeaways
- The book is built around specific, named instances of rejection -- three years from QVC, six from Sephora, direct comments about her appearance from an investor -- rather than resilience described in the abstract
- It reads as memoir, not a structured business framework, so readers wanting numbered, extractable steps should adjust expectations
- Real, documented commercial success backs the book's reception: an instant New York Times, USA Today, and number-one Wall Street Journal bestseller
- The book's later chapters carry substantial faith-based content that isn't clearly signaled in its marketing, according to multiple reader reviews
- Lima's on-camera comfort from her television news background is presented as directly responsible for how she sold IT Cosmetics once retailers finally gave her a chance
Who This Book Is Actually For
Readers who want a detailed, specific memoir about persisting through real institutional rejection, especially anyone who's been underestimated because of appearance, background, or lack of traditional credentials. It's also a natural fit for readers open to faith-inflected personal narrative rather than strictly secular business writing.
Who Should Read Something Else Instead
If you want a structured, tactical business book with extractable frameworks rather than narrative memoir, this won't be the best fit. And if faith-based reflection feels out of place in a book marketed primarily around entrepreneurship, the reader pushback above is worth taking seriously before starting.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Instant New York Times, USA Today, and number-one Wall Street Journal bestseller on release
- Real, named endorsements from Glennon Doyle and Sara Blakely, both public figures with their own substantial followings
- Specific, detailed accounts of rejection rather than vague inspirational language
- Strong 4.16 out of 5 rating across roughly 4,500 Goodreads ratings
- Lima's television background makes the writing conversational and easy to read in long stretches
Cons:
- The second half grows repetitive, according to multiple independent reader reviews
- Faith-based content in later chapters isn't clearly signaled upfront, catching some readers off guard
- Reads as memoir rather than a structured business how-to, which may disappoint readers expecting extractable frameworks
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Believe It a business book or a memoir?
It reads primarily as a memoir rather than a structured business how-to -- it's built around stories and anecdotes from Lima's life and the founding of IT Cosmetics rather than numbered steps or frameworks.
What's the actual Goodreads rating?
4.16 out of 5 from roughly 4,500 ratings as of this writing. Check the live number yourself, since it moves.
What happened to IT Cosmetics after the book was written?
Lima sold the company to L'Oreal in a deal reported at over a billion dollars and became the first female CEO of a brand in L'Oreal's 100-plus-year history, before stepping down as CEO in 2019.
What's the most common criticism of this book?
That the second half grows repetitive, and that the amount of faith-based content in the book's later chapters caught some readers off guard since it isn't signaled clearly upfront as a faith-inflected memoir.
Sources & Further Reading
- Goodreads — Believe It (aggregate rating, reader reviews)
- Glennon Doyle — published endorsement
- Sara Blakely — published endorsement
- Simon & Schuster — publisher page
- PositiveLifes.com — free inspirational and life-changing PDF books
Final Verdict
Believe It earns its bestseller status honestly -- Lima's specific, documented rejections and the real scale of what she eventually built give the book stakes that vaguer entrepreneurship memoirs don't have. The repetition and unsignaled faith content readers flag are legitimate, worth knowing going in, and reason enough to pace yourself through the second half. But the core story, told this specifically, is a genuinely different reading experience than most business-memoir shelves offer.
Buy Day rating: 7.9/10