Over the years, Youtuber, and makeup artist Eman has created makeup tutorials and shared aspects of her life with her more than 900k subscribers.
I first found her content on Instagram sometime last year. I remember seeing a picture of one of her makeup looks and attempting to recreate it. So, when I received an invite to the launch of her collaboration with Catrice in Toronto, Canada, I was excited about it various reasons. Firstly, it would give me the chance to talk to her about her impressive career journey in the competitive and ever-changing beauty industry. And secondly, I could get my hands on her newly released pallettes that looked black girl friendly (and they were).
During the interview, she was lovely and open to chatting about her youtube career, her advice for those who are getting started in the beauty industry and her makeup collaboration with Catrice Cosmetics.
In conversation with Eman, she details her humble beginnings as a makeup artist, whose desire to get better at her craft launched her Youtube career.
“I think I started my channel probably about nine years ago; I was a brand new makeup artist. I wanted to do something to make me stand out, and at the same time, I wanted to practice doing makeup. I knew that by doing makeup on camera, I could see all my mistakes, and that helped me get better. The more I did this, the more it kind of just developed a life of its own and I kind of went with it.”
– Eman
Like most successful ventures, long-lasting success does not happen overnight. For Eman, It has taken years of consistency and dedication to get to this point in her career. And as social media continues to evolve, it has also required a lot of resilience to do what she does and to do it so well while maintaining an engaged audience base. She credits her motivation to keep going to the power of knowing her personal story, knowing what makes her unique in the beauty sphere and being able to share that story with her almost 1 million subscribers.
“[to be succesful] You have to really know what your story is that you want to share with people. There so many people trying to do [Youtube] nowadays, and to be successful, you have to have a very specific story that is specific to you. You need to know what’s different about you and what differentiates you so you can stand out from the crowd. “
– Eman
Standing out from the crowd is exactly what she has done with the launch of her palettes. The palettes, which are inspired by her journey from living in Vancouver, Toronto and now LA, tell a wonderful story of a makeup artist who has always been dedicated to her craft and is committed to creating products with a diverse audience in mind.
Being is such a public-facing career is not without its ups and downs, namely public scrutiny and criticism, but through it all, she mentions that one of the greatest lessons from her 9-year career is self-compassion.
“I think the first [lesson] that comes to my mind right now is don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m not someone who is a perfectionist at all, but I think that we put so much pressure on ourselves, especially as women. It’s very reasonable to be concerned about what other people think. However, if something doesn’t do well, instead of taking it personally, you have to learn how to shake it off. When people don’t respond to content in a certain way, I try not to take it personally and instead to focus on why I’m doing this in the first place. And that is to connect with people, and it is to share something that I love.”
– Eman
Such an insightful interview!
Thank you so much!