The real truth about launching a brand — from someone who did it the messy way.

By Shahnaz Cola-Wrensch | Founder, Lumi Glo & The Glo Mentor

 I didn't launch a business because I had it all figured out. I launched because I got to a point in my life where staying where I was felt worse than taking the risk. It was feel the fear and fucking do it any way.

That's the version nobody posts about. The one where you're sitting in lockdown, losing your mind at what to do with your life, unhappy with the makeup industry you've given fourteen years to, and realising  that you are deeply unhappy. Not with your family. Not with your life on the surface. But with yourself.

 I'd been a makeup artist for over a decade. And the makeup industry I'd loved was becoming something I didn't recognise anymore. Toxic. Performative. Obsessed with a kind of perfection that was making women feel worse, not better. And I was feeling it too — in my body, in my confidence, in my nervous system.

And then a friend said something that changed everything. He said: 'If you don't do this now, you never will.'

 So I launched Lumi Glo with one product from my home. No fancy office. No investors. No team. Just me, knowing I really wanted to do this, a lot of self-doubt, and a genuine belief that there was a better way to help women feel good in their skin.

This is not a polished success story. This is the real one. And I recently shared the full version on Season 2, Episode 20 of the Glo From The Inside Out podcast — 'Building a Brand With Heart and Integrity'. But here, I want to go even deeper.

The idea is not enough

Here's something I see happen constantly. Someone gets a brilliant idea. They get excited. They spend months perfecting their branding, their packaging, their aesthetic. And then they launch — and nothing happens.

Because an idea alone is not enough. You have to understand why you're building it and who it's actually for.

So many businesses get started based on what the founder loves. What they think is cool. What's trending. What looks beautiful on a mood board. And all of that matters — I'm not dismissing it — but none of it answers the questions that actually determine whether people will buy.

"Is there actually a need for this? What problem am I solving? What is genuinely missing?"

And what I saw was this: overwhelmed women. Women with sensitive skin who had tried everything. Women with burnout who wanted to feel good without a complicated ten-step routine. Women who just wanted to glow — simply, quickly, without heavy makeup covering up skin they didn't feel confident in.

That became Lumi Glo's whole reason for existing. Simple skin. Healthy skin. The no-makeup makeup revolution. Not because it was a trend. Because there was a real, genuine need for it.

 Before you launch anything, sit with these questions honestly: Who is this for? Why would they buy from me specifically? What's actually missing from this space? And what pain am I solving — not just what do I want to create?

The things nobody prepares you for

This is the section of every entrepreneur story that usually gets glossed over. Because it's not the exciting bit.

 But it's the most important one.

Nobody tells you how expensive things become. Nobody warns you about the packaging order that arrives completely wrong and costs thousands to fix. Nobody prepares you for cash flow stress — that very specific anxiety of watching money leave your account and not knowing exactly when it's coming back.

 Nobody tells you about the moment your website isn't converting and you genuinely can't tell if it's the design, the copy, the product, or just a bad week. Nobody prepares you for the social media spiral — watching everyone else's brand looking perfect and wondering what you're doing wrong.

 And nobody — I mean nobody — prepares you for the self-doubt. The imposter syndrome. The days where you sit at your desk and genuinely think: am I doing the right thing? Does anyone care about this? Should I just go and get a job?

"You can have an amazing product and still struggle if people don't understand your brand."

That was my reality. My product was genuinely good — I knew it — but my website wasn't converting. My social media wasn't landing. I was posting beautiful, polished content and wondering why it wasn't connecting with people.

And then I figured out what was missing.

People don't want polished anymore. They want real. They want to feel something. They want connection, storytelling, education, and someone who speaks to them like a human being — not a brand trying to extract money from them.

"Pretty content without connection doesn't sell."

The brands winning right now are founder-led. Honest. They show behind the scenes. They share the difficult moments alongside the good ones. They're searchable, relatable, and binge-worthy. The hook matters. The story matters. And showing up consistently as a real person — not a polished persona — that matters most of all.

 The first five years are hard

I think social media has sold people a very dangerous idea: that success should happen quickly.

 You see someone go viral and think: why isn't that me? You watch a brand launch take off and wonder: what am I doing wrong? And when things are slow — when it's quiet, when the orders aren't coming, when nothing seems to be working — you start to wonder if you're failing.

Here's what I want to say directly: the first five years can be brutal. Not for everyone. But for most people. And that is not failure. That is the reality of building something that actually lasts.

I've made real, expensive mistakes. I've had things not work. I've had to pivot, rebrand, relaunch, evolve. I've had to learn things I never expected to need to know — about finance, logistics, marketing, operations, people, and myself.

And there were moments — more than a few — where I genuinely considered stopping.

"You're not failing because things are hard. You're building resilience."

On the topic of money: I funded Lumi Glo myself. That comes with its own kind of pressure. And one of the most important things I've had to learn is the difference between smart spending and spending that just makes the brand look impressive.

What actually grows your business? Not: what looks good on Instagram? But: what brings in real customers, builds loyalty, and keeps this thing sustainable? Learning to ask — and answer — that question honestly was one of the most significant shifts I made.

Business is personal development in disguise

About three years into running Lumi Glo, I got long COVID.

Everything stopped. Not just the business. Me. My energy. My confidence. My sense of who I even was.

I went through burnout in a way I'd never experienced before. My nervous system was completely depleted. I was hiding — from work, from people, from everything. And the more I isolated, the harder everything became.

That's when I had the realisation that changed everything for me.

"I wasn't just building a business. I was rebuilding myself."

Because here's the truth that nobody puts in a business plan: the work you do on yourself is directly connected to the results in your business. The more disconnected you become from who you are, the harder everything gets. The more you shrink, the more your brand shrinks.

I started working with coaches. I got into mindset work — manifestation, journaling, visualisation, things I might honestly have dismissed before. I found community. I stopped isolating and started speaking to people again. And slowly, things began to shift.

You cannot outwork a broken foundation. The best strategy in the world will not compensate for a depleted version of you showing up every single day.

"You cannot build a healthy business from a burnt-out nervous system."

So here are the things I protect every week now, no matter how busy things get: daily walks, exercise, journaling, coaching, community, real rest, routines that ground me, and boundaries around my time and energy.

These are not luxuries. They are the infrastructure of the business. Remove them, and everything else starts to fall apart.

The magic is in the small shifts

Most people quit too soon.

Not because their idea is bad. Not because they don't work hard enough. But because results aren't instant. They compare their chapter one to someone else's chapter ten. And they stop showing up before what they're building has had time to compound.

Real, sustainable success doesn't come from one big moment. It comes from thousands of small decisions, made consistently, over a long time.

It comes from posting when nobody is watching. From refining your product when you only have twenty customers. From continuing to show up to the conversation even when you feel like you have nothing to say. From choosing, again and again, to believe in the thing even when everything in you wants to stop.

"The magic happens when you keep going long enough to become the person capable of holding the success."

That's the part people don't talk about enough. You don't just need a better business. You need to become someone who's ready for it.

What I know now

I started Lumi Glo wanting to create skincare that helped women feel confident in their skin. Eleven awards later — and I still pinch myself saying that — what I know now is that this journey was never just about skincare.

It was about self-worth. Resilience. Identity. Healing. Confidence. Community. Learning — slowly, messily, imperfectly — how to back myself.

If you're somewhere in the middle of building something right now and it feels harder than you expected — you're not doing it wrong. You're just in it. And that's exactly where the real growth happens.

"You do not need to have everything figured out before you begin. You just need to stop abandoning yourself while building the thing you dream about."

That's it. That's the whole thing.