Perl of Wisdom

This week Iso­bel Perl talks about cre­at­ing her dream busi­ness at the age of 26, after sev­er­al set­backs meant mov­ing back in with her par­ents.  Some­times all you need is the right push…

As told to Miran­da Wilkin­son

“I start­ed 2020 sad and in ther­a­py. I knew some­thing need­ed to change and I was for­tu­nate enough to access ther­a­py through my work. I began to realise that I had lost my sense of pur­pose and in turn it left me feel­ing demotivated.

I took action into my own hands and began look­ing for a new career that felt more ‘me’. After secur­ing 2 final stage inter­views, I was over the moon. Then came the first rejec­tion call. Short­ly after that came the news of an immi­nent Lock­down and as such my sec­ond inter­view got post­poned indefinitely.

I remained pos­i­tive as at least I still had my job. I was soon then hit with the dev­as­tat­ing blow that I would be los­ing that job with no redun­dan­cy pay-out. 

I had to make some real­ly tough deci­sions dur­ing that time, includ­ing uproot­ing my life in Lon­don to move back in with my par­ents. The dis­cour­ag­ing hunt for jobs began, as well as the end­less rejec­tion emails or nev­er hear­ing back. 

It was at this point that I remem­bered an idea I had in Novem­ber 2019, a dream I had for­got­ten. That dream was to start my own skin­care busi­ness, com­bin­ing my love for skin­care and pas­sion for sci­ence hav­ing stud­ied Biol­o­gy at University. 

I decid­ed to see my job loss not as a set­back, but as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue my dream. I knew deep down I nev­er would have left job secu­ri­ty to do such a thing and so los­ing my job was a true bless­ing in disguise.

From May 2020 I began bring­ing my idea to real­i­ty. I sourced all my sup­plies, I worked on for­mu­lat­ing my prod­uct and I began test­ing it on my friends and fam­i­ly. I taught myself how to do mar­ket­ing, how to do pho­tog­ra­phy, how to cre­ate and build a web­site as well as so much more! Slow­ly and sure­ly, my idea start­ed tak­ing shape and in July 2020 I launched our first hero prod­uct, a British pink clay mask.

One of my main mis­sions in start­ing PERL­cos­met­ics was to cre­ate a 100% nat­ur­al skin­care brand that gives our cus­tomers the con­fi­dence to glow in their skin. We have over 100 5‑star reviews on our web­site, includ­ing reviews such as “My skin is glowing…I’m no longer feel­ing con­scious not wear­ing make-up.”. I have to pinch myself dai­ly that I’ve actu­al­ly cre­at­ed this brand all by myself.

I can’t believe how 2020 turned my life upside down for the bet­ter. I am so proud I took the risk and trust­ed what I was capa­ble of doing. I have cre­at­ed some­thing oth­ers love, and I am final­ly doing some­thing I am so pas­sion­ate about. I’ve felt I have final­ly found my pur­pose in life and I couldn’t be happier.”

See more here:
perlcosmetics.com
instagram.com/perlcosmetics