This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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There is a traditional path for successful makeup artists nowadays: Build up a roster of influential clients, accrue a following on social media, and start a brand of your own. After all, makeup artist-led brands — think: Makeup by Mario, Patrick Ta, Violette Fr and Fara Homidi — have never been hotter.
But makeup artist Kelli Anne Sewell is taking a different approach.
Sewell started her career in tech and would slide into the DMs of influential people, offering free services during her time off from work and posting the results on social media — even when she had 10 followers, she recalled. Her strategy has since paid off. Sewell has now provided glam for celebs and influencers including Kelsea Ballerini, Alix Earle and Kristin Juszczyk.
Along the way, Sewell realized she also has a knack for education. So, rather than stamp her name on a product collection, she founded Makeup By Kelli Anne, a members-only app and website featuring long-form beauty tutorial content ranging up from makeup 101s, like “How to line your lips” and “How to cover dark circles,” to joint features with big names like Jaclyn Hill, Sir John and Daniel Martin.
Now, Sewell herself has 331,000 Instagram followers and 159,000 TikTok followers, and her company’s Instagram account has over 73,000 followers.
In this episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, Sewell talks about starting scrappy, building a community and giving back to that community.
Below are highlights from the episode, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
Securing clients one DM at a time
“I had a dream of working with influential people in Austin, so I started doing outreach to influencers in Austin. … When you get in front of other people’s audiences, you naturally grow. A few people gave me a shot. I was just DM’ing them, [saying], ‘I would love to do your makeup for free.’ It really was just an outlet, and I had that luxury because I had a full-time job at the time. Obviously, that’s not a luxury every makeup artist has, and I have to address that. I would go and work with these clients — there was no payment, there was no, ‘You have to tag.’ I just was like, ‘I want you to love your makeup,’ and I hoped that they would share. … [Eventually], I knew I wanted to move to either L.A. or New York. I would use the money that I was earning at Oracle at the time to fly myself to L.A., New York and Nashville, and I would DM every single influencer and just say, ‘I would die to do your makeup. Want to connect?’ I did these trips in 2020. I was clocking in at Oracle at 5 a.m., then I would go do these [influencers’ makeup]. That’s how I started to grow — I was seeing this momentum. [When I did] Courtney Shields [makeup], I [gained] 12,000 [followers] overnight.”
A natural educator
“I didn’t have a dream of necessarily educating, but it was something that, innately, I was good at. … I noticed that, in my DMs, I was getting the same basic questions — for instance, ‘What’s the difference between contour and bronzer?’ ‘Help Kelli! Do I do foundation or concealer?’ So I [posted on] my [Instagram] Story, and I think, at the time, I had maybe 20,000 or 30,000 [followers]. … I said, ‘I’m going to teach a back-to-basics Zoom because a lot of you guys are asking the same questions, and I want to teach you the basics of makeup. … Email me.’ … I thought maybe 100 people would sign up, and 1,200 people emailed me.”
Giving back to her community
“[At my IRL master classes] we do a GA ticket. It’s a two-hour master class where you sit and you watch. Then, we do a GA+ ticket, which includes an after-party where we get a lot of my brand sponsors involved. I have great relationships with a lot of the brands I work with, and I’m so grateful that they want to be a part of this. There will be activations like engraving brushes, or swatching or doing hair. All of the attendees get gifting, which was something that was important to me from the beginning of this business, as someone who wasn’t an influencer. I used to watch influencer culture, and you see the same 10 people on a brand trip. You see rich girls getting more and more shit, and you’re like, ‘I want a free blush!’ My goal for all of the community events, all of the master classes, is to give everyone the influencer experience: to give them a free dinner, a free open bar and the same opportunities that I’ve been given that have allowed me to really build my business.”
