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From Etsy To Millions: How One Young Entrepreneur Beat The Odds And Found Success

May 9, 2016

Starla Tyler hasn’t pitched her business on Shark Tank. She didn’t graduate from Harvard or another prestigious Ivy League school. She doesn’t even have a business degree. And yet, the 34 year-old former teacher and mother of two from Highland, California, recently passed a milestone most entrepreneurs aspire to but few achieve. In 2015, after
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Starla Tyler hasn’t pitched her business on Shark Tank. She didn’t graduate from Harvard or another prestigious Ivy League school. She doesn’t even have a business degree.

And yet, the 34 year-old former teacher and mother of two from Highland, California, recently passed a milestone most entrepreneurs aspire to but few achieve. In 2015, after less than four years in business, her toy makeup company Little Cosmetics generated over $1 million in sales. She’s on track to do even more this year. Sales for the first quarter of 2016 were triple what they were in the first quarter of 2015.

“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” Tyler said. “I always wanted to be in charge of my work schedule and make my own time. I prefer to dictate my day.”

Prioritizing work-life balance over a stable job is an increasing trend among young workers who have grown up in the startup boom of companies like Facebook and Uber. Two-thirds of employees under age 35 who quit a job cite “lack of flexibility” as a reason, and 74 percent say they want to be able to work flexible hours without facing stigma, according to a recent study from Ernst & Young. More so than any other generation, millennial couples are more likely to want to share responsibility for earning income and caring for children. Many view entrepreneurship as the best path to achieving that balance, but few manage to build a sustainable business.

Read the rest of the article at International Business Times.