Emily Lyons: Five Ventures, Built From Under $100
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A Toronto founder who started her first company with no formal education past high school, and has since built businesses across event staffing, matchmaking, beauty and philanthropy.
The Starting Point
Emily Lyons describes her beginning without softening it: no formal education beyond high school, less than $100 to her name, and a first company launched on instinct.
Sixteen years later she operates a portfolio spanning event staffing, luxury matchmaking, clean beauty, accessories and a charitable foundation.
Her stated mission is to build businesses that matter, challenge outdated systems, and prove that you do not need privilege or permission to create an extraordinary life.
For a business magazine, that origin is worth more than the portfolio. Most entrepreneurship coverage profiles founders who began with capital, credentials or a network. Rather fewer begin with none of the three, and the ones who do have something more useful to say to readers in the same position.
The Portfolio
Her current ventures span five distinct businesses.
Femme Fatale Media is a nationwide event staffing, modelling and live marketing agency, and the business she founded first, at 24. She describes it as one of North America’s leading event staffing agencies.
Lyons Elite is a luxury matchmaking agency serving executives and entrepreneurs. True Glue Beauty is a clean beauty brand specialising in all-natural lash adhesives. JWLS sells contemporary watches and accessories, with proceeds raising funds for cystic fibrosis.
The Julia Lyons Foundation is a not-for-profit providing financial aid directly to people in the cystic fibrosis community.
Those last two deserve noting together. A commercial accessories brand feeding a charitable foundation addressing a specific condition is a structure, not a gesture, and the naming suggests a personal connection behind it.
What Connects Them
At first glance the portfolio looks scattered. Staffing, matchmaking, cosmetics and watches share no obvious market.
What they share is a model. Each is a business where presentation, standards and curation are the product, and where the operator’s judgement about people is what the customer is actually buying. An event staffing agency selects and prepares the people representing a brand. A matchmaking firm screens and introduces. A beauty brand curates formulation standards.
That is a transferable capability rather than a sector, and it explains how one founder can credibly run all of them.
It is also a reminder for owners that diversification works best when it follows a capability rather than an opportunity. The businesses in this series that have diversified successfully, including INKAS across manufacturing categories and Dr. Phone Fix across repair and resale, did the same thing: found new markets for something they already knew how to do.
Speaking and Publishing
Alongside the ventures, Lyons works as a speaker and consultant, hosts a podcast on business, and writes regularly for her own audience.
Her published writing is aimed squarely at founders rather than at customers, covering topics including why she considers unrealistic goals the only ones worth setting, what Toronto entrepreneurs need beyond inspiration, and the practical difficulties of launching a business at 24.
That last piece is the kind of material this magazine’s readers benefit from most. Founder content that describes the difficult period honestly is rarer than it should be, because it is less flattering than describing the outcome.
She reports more than 11,750 clients across her ventures and a social following of approximately 386,000.
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Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information intended only for informational purposes. CanadianSME Small Business Magazine does not endorse or guarantee any products or services mentioned. Readers are advised to conduct their research and due diligence before making business decisions.
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