The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal Podcast. You can listen to the full interview now on iTunes and Spotify.
“I lived with my dad growing up,” Marianna Hewitt, beauty blogger and co-founder of Summer Fridays tells me of her earliest memory of beauty, “so he didn’t know how to teach me about makeup. He would take me to department stores and have the ladies there teach me how to do my makeup, and that’s how I learnt about beauty- I learnt from the experts from a really young age.”
Marianna’s Summer Fridays co-founder, Lauren Gores, expresses a similar sentiment. “I have an older sister and she was always my beauty junkie,” Lauren explains. “She was the first person who taught me about beauty- she loved to do my makeup and share her skincare secrets. I remember she used to do my makeup for school dances, and that’s how I was first introduced to beauty and when I really fell in love with it.”
Despite that early and enduring love of beauty, neither Marianna nor Lauren ever imagined that they’d end up as industry stalwarts. “I never thought I would be doing this,” Lauren tells me. “We both wanted to be Oprah… we still want to be Oprah! That was my number one goal. Even after college, for a while I really wanted to be on The Today Show. Broadcasting was my dream. The digital space did not exist when we were in college, so for it to go in this direction was not expected, but in the best possible way.”
“Ever since I was little, I used to walk around the house with a video camera,” Marianna laughs. “I’d interview my family, I’d talk to them, and I had a passion for sharing things. My mum used to take me to New York and I would stand outside where they filmed The Today Show. I would watch Katie Couric from over her shoulder and I would read off the teleprompter and think ‘One day I’m going to live in New York and work on this morning news show.'”
Both Marianna and Lauren pursued those dreams, and while their respective careers may not look quite like that of Katie Couric, both women did, separately, attend college for Broadcast Journalism.. “I ended up going to LA afterwards,” Marianna tells me of the time that followed. “Lauren was working as a news anchor and I was working as a television host doing fashion and beauty news. I would go to auditions and every audition I would go on, I’d get to the end and then I’d lose out to a famous person. I wouldn’t get the roles because this person had a bigger audience than me or were more well known- but you can’t become more well known unless you get a job, and you can’t get a job unless you’re more well known! It got to the point where YouTubers and influencers became their own network, so that’s when I started a blog and a YouTube channel. I couldn’t get those jobs, so I took it into my own hands and created my own channel. Now, anyone can have their own network without anyone telling them ‘no.'”
“And you get to create your own community, which I think it really special,” adds Lauren. “Before, we used to dream of having this television presence, but you don’t necessarily get to choose your community but this, in a way, is so much more specific to us. They’re like an extension of our friends and family, because it’s people who really want to be part of your world and what you’re sharing. We get to share what we’re passionate about.”
Marianna agrees that the ability to cultivate your own audience gives you more creative freedom. “No bosses telling us ‘No,’ when we pitch an idea! If we want try something new, we can try it. There’s no one telling us ‘I don’t think that’ll work for our audience.’ It’s everything we wanted to do when we grew up, just on a new channel.”
“I was 21 and I moved to the middle of Missouri to a small ABC news station,” Lauren tells me of her early career trajectory. “I started out as a news reporter- I was lugging around all of my own equipment, doing my own live shots, driving the news van. It was not glamorous, but I learnt so much. I eventually became a morning news anchor and had to go into work at 1am every day. It was a very early start but it taught me so much about self discipline. Even though I may not necessarily have continued down a traditional news path, it really taught me about how to get up early, go after what you want and create a path that’s your own. I wouldn’t change that experience for the world, I’m very grateful for that.
“I initially only started blogging so that I could get more broadcasting jobs. In LA there were a lot of lifestyle segments, and prior to moving to LA I’d just done a lot of political and hard news- things that were not very bright or fun. I thought ‘Okay, well if I start blogging I can become an expert in that [lifestyle] space.’ Making a career out of it was a happy accident.
“I never anticipated, especially to this extent, that I’d be working in beauty. I’ve always loved skincare- I always masked, so it’s funny that that’s been our first product. I didn’t necessarily think that I would have my own brand. I think it just goes back to, for so long, I had a really set and specific dream of being a television host, but as we continued sharing things that we were passionate about it became a more apparent direction that we could go in- it just took some time. We always say ‘Love the process over the plan,’ because sometimes you have a plan in your head and then things can go in a really different direction, so you need to allow yourself the flexibility to go in another direction rather than just hanging on to something. We don’t want to lose out on an opportunity just because we’re not being flexible.”
Rather than following the more traditional path of a broadcast journalist, Marianna put her communications skills to use elsewhere post-college. “I felt like, in college, when I started doing the more traditional news route… I felt depressed,” she confesses. “When I moved to LA, my first job was in PR. I worked in entertainment public relations and my first jobs were with Sofia Vergara, Mary J Blige and Jada Pinkett Smith. It was actually Sofia Vergara’s first season of Modern Family. She’d been acting for a long time prior to the show, and I would take her to all her press interviews and say “Modern Family is going to be ABC’s number one comedy, will you please interview Sofia?” I realised PR was a very hard job, and it’s so out of your control, even when you’re working for amazing people. In that process of taking these amazing stars to their interviews, I was realising that I still wanted to be the one interviewing them- not taking them to the interviews.”
Marianna took that epiphany and ran with it, securing herself a position as a segment presenter. “I ended up working in entertainment news first, then I transferred into fashion and beauty news because I didn’t love gossiping about people,” Marianna explains. “I loved fashion and beauty news, this is what I love, and I felt like sharing things that were making feel good about themselves was the path I wanted to go down.
We feel that when you look good, you feel good, you feel more confident, you can tackle whatever it is throughout your day. When I feel confident in myself, I can do anything.”
“We don’t want people to feel intimidated by the beauty world,” Lauren agrees. “There’s this misconception about the beauty world- that if you’re obsessed with beauty you have to know everything about it. With our products, they’re very easy to use, so people who may not feel as connected to the beauty world can feel like it’s an easy part of the routine. It makes them feel good. It’s a point of self care and of self love.”
Marianna was well onto her way of living our her childhood dream, but she felt that her work wasn’t bringing her as much joy as she’d earlier anticipated. “In Los Angeles we’re already three hours behind, so I would go to work at 4.30 in the morning everyday, I would write my stories in the morning, and I was always trying to play catch up with New York,” she explains. “By the time I got my content up that day, filmed my stories and produced them, I was already behind.”
It was then that Marianna identified what might have been the biggest fashion and beauty trend yet- the YouTube movement. She knew that content of this style was going to take off, and wanted to get involved as early on in the piece as possible. “Selfishly, I didn’t want to film and edit the videos myself, nor did I know how to, so I pitched to my boss that I wanted to do a hair tutorial. She was like ‘I’m not sure if this is a good idea, but let’s try it and see what happens.’ I filmed “How To Do a J-Lo Bun,” and within the first day it got a million views online. They said ‘Once a week, one of your stories can be a hair or makeup video.’ Then it slowly transitioned into all of my content being tutorial style, and no more fashion and beauty news because they [Marianna’s employers] saw that that was the way digital content was going.”
To this day, Marianna is widely regarded as one of the first YouTube “beauty gurus.” “At the time, there were a handful of people,” Marianna tells me of how many people had got on board with the platform early. “I think I came in at the right time before a tonne of people became bloggers and YouTubers.” What set Marianna apart from other beauty content creators was her somewhat elevated approach to beauty- an affinity for prestige beauty and luxury products during a time when drugstore makeup and heavy glam reigned supreme. “When I started my YouTube channel, I just did makeup in the way that I loved,” she explains of her point of difference. “I’m an educated consumer- I’m not an expert and I’m not a professional. I think that made it more relatable too- it was just like your friend who also loves makeup.”
Having met through family friends years earlier (and leading eerily parallel lives, despite not meeting in college), the first months of 2014 saw both Lauren and Marianna launch their respective blogs- Lauren with a focus on clean beauty and lifestyle, and Marianna with luxury beauty as a point of convergence.
“February 1st 2014 was the day that I launched my blog,” says Marianna, while Lauren laughs at her ability to recall the specific date. “The reason I know the exact day is because I knew that I was going to launch a blog, I was getting everything ready and I thought ‘I’m just going to post online and tell people I’m launching this,” because I knew I couldn’t back out if I told people.'”
“Well I don’t remember the very first day,” laughs Lauren, “but it was around that time. Similarly to to Marianna, I didn’t start my blog and think ‘Oh, I’m a blogger now.’ I was still working my full time job and was still a newscaster at that point. Honestly, for two and a half years, I didn’t fully commit to using the word “blogger.” Now, looking back, I wish that I had used it and owned it, but because it was at a time that not many people were doing it and because I’d gone down a very traditional path, I almost felt a little embarrassed. Now, if you tell someone that you’re blogging, people understand that it’s a real business and that you can create real things from it. There were a couple of years there where I was really trying to do both careers- I was trying to blog, but I was also trying to be a broadcaster. I think it would have helped to commit. Now, people really know what it is and what you can create.”
Both Marianna and Lauren agree that their broadcast journalism backgrounds allowed them to thrive in a new media space, and that it was that specific skill set that saw them transition their online presence into full time work. “Fortunately for me, when I started [a blog] Instagram existed a little bit,” Marianna explains of the time she spent growing her community online. “I was already doing sponsored content via my Instagram and working at the same time. When I knew I could make as much money from sponsored content as I was at work, I thought ‘Okay, I can transition now and do this full time.’ I didn’t want to leave my full time job until I knew I could support myself. It was about April 2014. It happened very quickly, but I think it was because of the background that Lauren and I had from work that meant I took it very seriously from the beginning. Working in broadcast and having deadlines and filming content meant that I transitioned that very easily into a blog and YouTube channel. I had a schedule. I wish I could keep to that content schedule now!”
If she were, hypothetically, beginning again today, Marianna concedes that the digital landscape is slightly more difficult to navigate. “I think it’s a little more difficult now. It’s not impossible, but you have to be very focused. You have to have a niche. Right now there’s so many people, so you can’t be as generic as you could be when we first started. You have to be an expert. Be specific so people know what they’re getting from you.” To those just getting started, Marianna also suggests looking into talent management- something she sought out early in her digital career following a nightmare contract loophole that saw her exclusively locked into a brand for a full year. “I was doing it all myself. They would email me, I would tell them my rates, and they would send me payment via Paypal.”
While Marianna made the leap into full time self employment after a matter of months, the process took a little longer for Lauren. “I really had a broadcasting dream,” she admits, “and it was really hard for me to let go of that- but I could see that the whole industry was changing. I could see that it was going in a different direction, but it took me a bit longer to accept it. After a couple of years I really fell in love with creating things in my own space, and that’s when I officially switched over.”
Having cultivated highly engaged followings and carved specific, beauty-ingrained niches for themselves, Lauren and Marianna began to toy with the idea of a shared partnership. “For a long time, we had a dream of doing something together- we just didn’t know exactly what it would look like,” Lauren tells me. “We always knew that we would make really good partners. We’re very similar in the sense that we have a very similar “big picture” vision that I don’t think a lot of people necessarily have. That’s been really important. We have very similar morals, values and work ethics, but we’re also different enough to work well together.”
“We talk about, in business, the “dating phase” of things,” Marianna adds. “A business is a marriage. The dating phase that we had, knowing each other for so long, we knew what we were getting in to before committing. In business partnerships you really need to know someone very well. You are talking to this person all day, every day. Luckily we have a great marriage!”
Conversations pertaining to precisely what that partnership would look like followed soon thereafter. “We knew we wanted to start a skincare brand and we knew we wanted to start with masks,” Marianna explains of the initial development process. “We were formulating at the same time as we were branding. Everything was happening all at the same time. The product development phase was happening as the branding phase was happening, and we let them inspire each other. We did a lot of homework before starting. Thanks to social we knew who our girl was, who we were selling to, what what is she like, what does she buy? Luckily for us, with platforms like ShopStyle and RewardStyle, you have so much data on your followers- where do they shop, how much do they shop, what are the price points, where are the top retailers? We knew so much, so a lot of the guessing was taken out when we started the company.”
Lauren agrees that influencers have real power as marketers, given their access to preexisting consumer analytics and a unique ability to communicate one-on-one with their customer. “We always say that our community was our focus group before they knew that they were our focus group,” she says. “We really created our first products based on feedback that we had received from our individual communities. We put all of that [feedback] into what ingredients we used, what kind of product we wanted to create, and really what our brand messaging was. We had a very clear idea of who the customer was and we don’t go away from that. In any company, it’s easy to get excited about trends and colours, but we always come back to who we are at our core. We have core beliefs that we always come back to, and we want all of our products and messaging to reflect that.”
With product ideas in mind and a built-in community ready to shop, the physical product formulation phase took upwards of two years. “We weren’t in a rush though- we wanted to do everything right,” Marianna explains. “We really took our time with product development and branding and packaging and making sure that when we launched we were doing everything correctly. We were lucky enough to launch with a retailer in the US, and when we did that we had to then function as a big company. We had to get roles in place as far as a supply chain and a warehouse- things we didn’t know about. Honestly, from the very beginning, it made us think big and think large. All our ducks had to be in a row because we couldn’t mess up at that point.”
Adding to that pressure to get it right was the fact that Summer Fridays was due to launch with just one product- meaning that if their initial release, the now-cult Jet Lag Mask, had failed, the company may not have survived its first years. “It’s a big risk, but also a great reward,” conceded Marianna. “We always had our first year planned out. We knew, as influencers and consumers, how overwhelmed we were with choices when we were shopping and when we received packaging for reviewing. When we received things we’d get a box with 20 things from a brand, and they would all be amazing but we wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Everything is oversaturated a bit,” Lauren agrees, “so allowing that one product to live for a while allowed people to really get to know the brand.”
Summer Fridays have since launched an additional two masks (Overtime and R+R, the latter of which will be available in Australia in the very near future although I have been sworn to secrecy), but have stuck to a strict “no” list to ensure their products are as safe for use as possible- Lauren was around six weeks pregnant when they began to formulate the Jet Lag Mask, meaning the ingredients she could safely use were distinctly different to what she was using a mere six weeks prior. “I literally birthed two babies in the same year,” she laughs. “It helped us create a very strict “No” list when we were formulating. When we first came up with the idea, I was in the process of switching all of my skincare and makeup. There’s a lot that you have to cut out. The whole thing was a real learning experience for me, so we were able to apply that to our own products.”
At the time of writing, all three of Summer Fridays’ products are masks- a product that can be added to ones’ existing skincare routine. “We have a very extensive skincare and makeup routine, so we know that we use a lot of products, so we expect that our community use a lot of products,” Lauren explains of that decision. “We wanted something that would compliment their routine really well. We try to solve a problem. We wanted to gain trust from our community, and launching with one product allowed people to get to know our brand. We do work with a number of different brands, and we’ll always love a number of different brands.”
“Right now we’re skincare focused,” Marianna adds. “The first three products we formulated prior to launching, and right now we’re very community driven so we have been taking the input from all of our followers. We see every DM and comment, and we use the Questions feature on Instagram all the time. We have an Excel sheet and we’re tallying what everyone’s asking for and we align that with what we want to create for Summer Fridays, so we’re marrying those things together. We’re making the products that we felt were right for the brand while still addressing the concerns that our community want for their skincare routines. Moving forward, you’ll see things directly created based off what they are asking us for.”
As evidenced by their grassroots approach to turning feedback into physical product, Lauren and Marianna note that they are involved with every step of the formulation process. “It was the two of us working with the lab from day one,” says Lauren. “We had a wish list of products that we wanted to test, create and try- a number of which no one will every see, because we weren’t obsessed with them! There are ones that we love, so we go back to the lab and make a number of tweaks over several months, sometimes years, to our formulas. It’s something that we’re really attached to and very much involved in. Regardless of how big our team eventually gets, it’s something that we’re both really passionate about.”
“We thought about different skin concerns that we had,” Marianna tells me of that initial wish list.
“Jet Lag came from my literal jet lag. I fly the redeye from LA to New York all the time, and I usually land and go straight to work which, as an influencer, means a photoshoot or an event. I never wanted to look as tired as I felt. Lauren’s jet lag life at the time was her pregnancy, and then being a new mum. Everyone’s life is really hectic and busy, and we wanted to come up with solutions for that. We wanted to create a skincare routine that was fast, effective, clean and cool.”
We wanted longevity- not just in the products, but in the branding,” adds Lauren.
With Marianna averaging a flight every three days thus far in 2019 and Lauren caring for a 22-month-old while simultaneously managing Summer Fridays and their online presences, you’d be forgiven for assuming these women had struck that magic and all-elusive work-life balance. “It’s a work in progress,” Marianna counters. “Where Lauren has Evan [her baby], my other baby is the influencer life. I have no idea how I could add anything else into what I’m currently doing because there’s no time, but I really love the brands that I work with. I feel so fortunate to have built the career that I have in this time because I really get to be selective now, so I really do turn down most of the work that comes my way and I’m only accepting the jobs from brands that I really love. Because of the time that we dedicate to Summer Fridays, I really can’t take on jobs that I’m not obsessed with- that’s not where I want to spend my time. It’s hard though. We’re self employed, so we don’t have normal schedules, we don’t have normal hours, people are always asking us things at all hours of the day, and being an influencer means that a lot of your job is done on nights and weekends, so it’s definitely hard.”
“You have to learn to forgive yourself a bit,” Lauren notes. “I don’t think the perfect balance exists for anyone. It’s an imperfect balance. Different things at different points in your life will require more attention, and it’s just about prioritising.”
