On Friday, 500 guests joined Glossy Pop at New York City’s FIT, where they heard from top influencers including Mikayla Nogueira, Stephanie Valentine (aka Glamzilla), Sarah Palmyra and Darcei Giles. Nogueira spoke about the transition from top creator to founder of Point of View beauty in a session called “Behind the Scenes of Launching an Influencer-founded Beauty Brand — an Insider’s POV on POV.” Later, Valentine, Palmyra and Giles spoke about staying true to themselves and their values, even as their follower counts have grown, in a talk titled “Growing Authentically: How to Work with Brands While Staying True to Yourself and your Audience.”
Along with speaker sessions, the event featured activations by Medicube, Blake Brown, Fenty, Outfit Curator, Divi and Teleties, plus a gift bag featuring products from Humble Seed, Happy Flower, Grown Alchemist, Fenty Beauty, Image Skincare, Medicube, Grande Cosmetics, Laura Geller, Teleties, Blake Brown Beauty, Divi, Makeup Forever, Makeup by Mario, Goldie Locks, Danessa Myricks, Goodal, Clearstem, Inter Parfums, Inc (MCM), Verb and Dibs.
Below are highlights from the influencer sessions, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
When you’re an influencer, your audience’s trust is all you have
A beauty creator’s career, and life itself, changes from the time they start posting content that resinates — but it’s important not to lose sight of who you were when you started, said Valentine.
“I think about when my beauty career started. … I was inspired by creators, and I think about when I first related to them, or when I lost trust in creators who I was passionate about and loved. My whole goal is for that to never happen. I like to think about who I was when I started, and I like to always remember her. When I work with brands, … I think of three things: me back then, me of the future and my audience,” Valentine said.
Palmyra spoke to the idea of keeping in mind who she actually works for. “At the end of the day, I think, ‘I don’t work for those brands. I get to work with brands, which is great, but I feel like my audience gave me this job, so I kind of work for them. I’m here to review whatever they need.”
As the panelists discussed how to maintain authenticity as their followings grew — on TikTok, Glamzilla has 2.7 million followers, Palmyra has 1.1 million and Giles has 2.4 million — Giles touched on the importance of not forgetting one’s values. “For me, it’s really easy to decide which brands to work with and which to not work with, because I know what my values are,” she said. “As long as you know what your values are, it’ll be really easy to say yes or no to certain brands. For example, I’ve said no to [major opportunities] just because I knew they would interrupt my time with my friends and my family. … I don’t want my career to be my entire life.”
On the importance of long-term partnerships
To Valentine, long-term partnerships with brands also connect to authenticity. “For all of my paid partnerships, every single one of them, there’s brand history — there’s a documented digital footprint of my relationship with the brand, since 2016 [when Instagram Stories] started. Building long-term relationships creates brand passion. It’s so important for me to know the formulas I’m talking about inside and out, whether it’s a paid partnership or an organic post. It’s also really important for my audience to believe what I say — that, after the hashtag #ad is over, [they] still see me using that product. … I’m not just trying to be a creator who blows up and goes viral. I’m trying to build an empire. I’m trying to build my forever.”
Becoming a founder inevitably changes being a creator
Being a founder is, obviously, a demanding job, and it’s also a big transition from the life of a content creator. It’s a shift that Nogueira — a mega-influencer with 16.9 million TikTok followers and now co-founder of Point of View Beauty (POV) — knows well. As a content creator, Nogueira has, for years now, woken up early to start filming reviews of new makeup launches or tutorials of a given beauty look. Her life as she has worked on POV has involved product development trips to Seoul, masterclasses co-hosted with brands like Rare Beauty and speaking on panels at events like Pop NYC.
“Something I always say is really critical to me as a creator is — and I will die on this hill — to be a creator first, founder second. An example, and I love this person to death, is Patrick Starrr, right? I grew up watching him [be an] incredibly influential creator, but he chose for his path to kind of flip the role and be a founder first, creator second. That doesn’t work for me, because I love to create. There’s a reason why I post every single day. It’s because I love it. I get so much joy from filming, editing, ideating and just being so creative. So if I were to lose that piece of myself as a founder, that would really tear me apart, honestly. So it’s been difficult finding the balance of being a creator and being founder, because I want to be able to balance both.”
