'My Kidneys Shut Down'–ILIA Beauty Founder's Wake-Up Call After Scaling To $100M

Forbes

21-06-2025

Founder of ILIA Beauty Sasha Plavsic experienced near-fatal burnout after scaling to $100M
Sasha Plavsic was on opioids, trying to show up to meetings, her kidneys shutting down from years of relentless stress. The founder of ILIA Beauty had just sold the majority of her company after scaling it from $5 million to $100 million in under four years—a trajectory that should have left her basking in triumph. Instead, she was fighting for her life.
"It could have killed me," Plavsic tells me, reflecting on the 2021 health crisis that took two and a half years to recover from.
Today, ILIA Beauty stands as one of clean beauty's greatest success stories, acquired for an undisclosed amount by the prestigious Courtin-Clarins family—their first major investment. But Plavsic's journey from late-night side hustle to a nine-figure exit offers crucial lessons for the seventy-five percent of female founders who, according to new research from the Female Founders Alliance, experience burnout while building their companies.
I met Plavsic serendipitously on a Whistler hiking trail, where her grounded presence gave no hint that success had nearly killed her. But as she described choosing to step back from her company due to her body's breakdown from overwork, I knew more women needed to hear her story. And recently, I had the honor of having her as a guest on The Failure Factor Podcast.
The Beginning of Her Climb
In 2009, Plavsic had hit what she described as "rock bottom." Fresh off a breakup and battling severe acne that had plagued her since childhood, the 30-year-old moved back into a studio suite next to her parents' garage in Vancouver.
Her mother—already health-conscious from helping Plavsic's brother navigate severe allergies and asthma in the 1980s—urged her to examine her skincare products. What Plavsic discovered shocked her: many of the products meant to help her acne were actually making it worse.
This was 2009, when "clean beauty" wasn't yet a category. The market was split between natural products that didn't perform and luxury beauty loaded with questionable ingredients. Plavsic saw an opportunity in the gap.
"I wanted to disrupt the beauty industry and make products that people trust," she declared.
Armed with a $25,000 line of credit and two credit cards, she spent two years developing her first product: a hybrid lipstick-balm that tinted and hydrated. While working days at an aromatherapy company, she'd come home and work from 8pm to 2am formulating and refining.
She went through three manufacturers who told her it couldn't be done before finally finding one willing to work with her vision of clean beauty.
"Being young and naive is a really good combination," Plavsic muses in reference to her perseverance despite repeated challenges and rejections. 'I felt safe in failing.'
Following Her Inner Compass
Her instincts would prove invaluable when Sephora approached ILIA for partnership in 2012, just a year after launch. Most founders would have jumped at the opportunity. Plavsic said no.
'I [didn't] have any money,' she explained, recognizing that in order to maximize the opportunity with Sephora, she needed capital and strategy.
This decision proved prescient. She was approached again by Sephora in 2015 to help them define the standards for their entire clean beauty category. By 2017, when ILIA finally launched in Sephora with just two products, the timing was perfect. The brand's hero product, the Super Serum Skin Tint SPF 40, has since sold over one million units.
ILIA Beauty's Skin Tint SPF 40 has sold over 1 million units.
"The more we can get in touch with our intuition, the better," Plavsic advises. "A lot of decisions I've made are from that little voice in your head or feeling in your stomach. It's amazing what we do to cover it up and not listen to it."
Gaining Elevation, Losing Herself
As ILIA's revenue skyrocketed from $5 million in 2018 to $16 million to $36 million to $100 million by 2021, so did the demands on Plavsic's time and health. She had her first child in 2015, lost a parent, and was essentially running the company alone while her husband traveled eight months a year for work.
"I was so burned down [sic]. I was sad all the time. I was pretty much dying inside," she recounts.
Her experience mirrors a broader crisis among female founders. According to the FFA report, fundraising pressure is the primary cause of burnout for fifty-eight percent of VC-backed founders, with women facing the additional burden of pitching to skepticism while men pitch to opportunity. The report also found that forty percent of female founders cite gender as their top fundraising barrier—a challenge Plavsic knows firsthand.
"It was worse than I ever could have imagined," she reflected on the fundraising landscape. Even with over $1 million in revenue, "it was like pulling teeth."
Hoping to reduce her responsibilities, Plavsic made a crucial decision: she hired a CEO.
'There are a lot of founders who want to be a CEO,' Plavsic states. "But unless you understand how to run a business—especially once you hit the 5, 10, 30 million [mark]—you should be pulling somebody else in who's gonna know how to scale."
If You Don't Say 'Enough,' Your Body Will
Despite having a partner in the business, the relentless pace eventually caught up with Plavsic. In 2021, she made the difficult decision to sell the majority of ILIA to the Courtin-Clarins family. After the sale and relocating to Canada, her body finally succumbed to the exhaustion. She learned that her kidneys were failing—the culmination of years running on adrenaline. 'It was a moment of like, okay, I got to figure this out because actually nothing else matters,' she recalled.
The timing of the sale proved fortuitous as the M&A market cooled significantly in subsequent years. But more importantly, it gave her something money couldn't buy: the space to heal. Recovery took two and a half years.
Today, Plavsic offers a powerful metaphor for her transformed relationship with work: "If you think of an icy lake in Canada with soft spots, I'm on top of the lake now. I can look into the softer spots and reach in to help when needed. Before, I was at the bottom, holding my breath."
Is The View Worth The Climb?
As ILIA continues to thrive under its new ownership structure—with Plavsic maintaining a significant stake and focusing on product development—her story serves as both an inspiration and a reality check: Yes, you can bootstrap a beauty brand to $100 million in revenue. But as Plavsic learned, knowing how to grow is only half the equation. The other half is knowing how to do so sustainably.
Her advice to entrepreneurs, particularly women juggling business and motherhood, calls us to get clear on what really matters:
'If you were to strip away everything—your business, your goals—what brings you joy at a very base level? That truth is something you can carry through any situation.' As a therapist and executive coach, I call this exercise 'diversifying our self-worth portfolio:" In pursuit of success, founders have a tendency to neglect the areas of their lives that give them a sense of relevance. The result? Feeling like they can't set boundaries with work, because they believe if they fail they will have—and be—nothing.
Leaving Guilt Behind
Despite her more grounded perspective, Plavsic still grapples with balancing motherhood and leading product development: 'I think guilt is still very prevalent for me weekly," she admits.
The guilt Plavsic describes isn't just personal—it's systemic. Society demands that women be both perfect mothers and fearless founders, then ensures they'll fail at one or both. Stay home and you're "not providing for the family." Build a business and you're "an elusive mom." This isn't about individual choices; it's about a culture that turns motherhood into a no-win game. The guilt is an inevitable product of the system.
Plavsic believes in letting go of the 'have it all' narrative, which helps her release guilt and prioritize her family. 'You'll never regret picking your family over some opportunity in business. You won't remember that one meeting. You'll remember the other moments.'
That day on Whistler Mountain, I followed Plavsic as she hiked steadily and intentionally. She moved like someone who—after nearly dying to reach $100 million in revenue—had finally learned to pace herself and wanted to be present for the journey.
For the seventy-five percent of female founders experiencing burnout, Plavsic's journey offers both validation and hope: In a culture that glorifies sacrificing everything to "have it all," the real courage lies in knowing which views are worth the climb.
Megan Bruneau, M.A. Psych is a therapist, executive coach, and the founder of Off The Field Executive & Personal Coaching. She hosts The Failure Factor podcast featuring conversations with entrepreneurs about the setbacks that led to their success. Listen to her episode with ILIA Beauty founder Sasha Plavsic on Apple and Spotify.