Lyric doesn’t act like a “young entrepreneur.” She acts like a kid who’s been doing this long enough that it feels normal.
She’s 13. She’s in eighth grade at Ben Franklin Middle School. And she’s been making lip gloss since 2020—back when she was nine or ten years old, sitting on her mom’s bed with a laptop open, building a supply list like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I remember sitting on her bed and going on Amazon, looking at the gloss, the tubes, picking everything out,” she said.
It started as play, the way a lot of real skills do. But it didn’t stay there. By fifth grade, she was bringing gloss to school. Friends would ask for some. She’d hand it out because she’s nice, and because at that age, nobody is thinking about margins.
“They’d be like, ‘Oh, you should make me some.’ So I’d give them some,” she said. “Then I was like, ‘We should make this official. We should actually start doing this.’”
A Family Business, But A Separate Lane
Lyric is growing up inside her mom’s company, Woke Soap Apothecary, a Fargo-based brand that’s been around for 10 years. Her mom is in her 40s now, building on a decade of work that began when she was a single mom. She knows how hard it is to keep a business alive long enough to call it “established.”
“This is all her right here though,” her mom said. “I’m just the support.”
It matters that she says it that way, because it’s easy for a kid’s product line to get treated like an extension of the parent’s brand. In this case, it’s more like an apprenticeship that’s turning into independence.
Lyric helps with her mom’s business. She helps with names, labels, scent ideas, and product brainstorming. But she’s also carving out her own table at vendor shows.
“We do vendor shows, and I’ll have my little table next to hers with my stuff,” Lyric said.
The First Flavor
The origin story is sweet in the simplest way.
Do you remember your first flavor?
“Bubble gum,” Lyric said.
Was that for you?
“Yeah. I really loved bubble gum. I was addicted to the smell. I loved it.”
That’s the thing about the early versions of a product. They aren’t made for a market. They’re made for one person’s taste. The market comes later. And the actual process is more straightforward than most people assume.
“It’s not that hard,” she said. “You mix the flavor with the gloss, and you have a base that you put it into.”
Base gloss, flavor, tube. Then there are the details that are hers like stones embedded in some of the tubes.
“One is scented or flavored. She left it plain,” her mom said. “It has stones in it. A lot of people set intentions with stones and talk about balancing chakras.”
