Michelle Phan is an American beauty YouTuber that became the founder and owner of the multimillion-dollar cosmetics line EM Cosmetics. However, her journey to success wasn’t instant, and took hard work and persistent from a young age. At only 18 years old, Michelle began pursuing her interests in makeup tutorials and blogging online, starting up a YouTube channel two years later at age 20. While her videos were initially slow to become successful, at age 22, a feature of two of her videos on BuzzFeed enabled her to reach over one million subscribers. After receiving a sponsorship from the popular makeup brand Lancôme, Phan began to look into starting up a makeup brand of her own. At age 23, Phan cofounded a company called MyGlam, later renamed Ipsy, which is a monthly beauty product subscription service. Within that same year, Phan partnered with YouTube advertising, and also started a YouTube channel network. Just a year later, she launched her own makeup brand with LoReal, buying the whole company and relaunching 3 years later. At the young age of only 28, Michelle was worth over $100 million, putting her on the “Forbes 30 under 30” and the “Inc. under 30 lists”. While she has taken a step back from YouTube, she continues to be successful, partnering with talent companies, TV networks, music licensers, and publishing companies. She is an inspiration young entrepreneurs to start pursuing your dreams at a young age.
I think its really cool how YouTube is a space where almost anyone can put themselves out there in any category to pursue their interests and start up. Michelle continued to make her videos because she enjoyed it and not because it was successful (for it wasn’t at first). And, because she continued to pursue her interest in makeup and learned from her failures, she has become very successful and is a great example of an entrepreneur.