After I got semi-fired from the gym, I went to Ibiza to work the season, at the start of summer 2018. We have this joke in my family that I’m never home for my birthday, I’m always in a different country, doing something different with a different set of people. For my eighteenth I’d been in Macau for the pageant; now, for my nineteenth birthday, I’d be in Ibiza, working at a beach club as a door girl. The club was the place to work on the island. I interviewed for the job in London and loads of girls went for it, so I was really excited to get it.
And the job itself was OK. When people walked in, I’d be on reception, asking, ‘Would you like to book a table?’ and walking them to it. The minimum spend for a table was £500, and with that you’d get unlimited food and drinks … but I really wasn’t enjoying it. I was so homesick and hardly made any friends. A lot of people around me were taking drugs. Before a shift, I’d go into someone’s bedroom at 10am, and they’d be sniffing drugs on their dressing table. I just thought, I can’t be around this. My parents are in the police! They did not raise me to be OK with being around this stuff. I stayed about two weeks and went home.
But what may have seemed like a mistake at the time actually led me further down the path I truly wanted to follow …
The one good thing about that experience was that, even in the short time I was in Ibiza, my Insta following went up quite a bit – people liked the fact that I was posting from this new place – and I hit around 16,000 followers while I was there. I was also getting on the radar of brands. In the run-up to my trip, I’d already been tagging brands in my posts when I wore their clothes, so they’d notice me. That meant that, before I went to Ibiza, my absolute favourite, PrettyLittleThing, sent me some clothes that I packed to shoot. And a brand from Instagram also gifted me some outfits for my trip; I remember they paid me £70 to upload three posts featuring those outfits while I was there. I could not believe that a fashion company wanted to pay me to take pictures in their clothes and post them on Instagram. I thought, This is happening!
By this point, I was desperate to become a full-time influencer. I was sure this was what I needed to do, that this was my calling. It incorporated everything I loved – hair, make-up, fashion – with everything I wanted to do, including being my own boss. So, I was determined not to get another job when I got back from Ibiza. I told my dad, ‘Look, I’m making money! Give me this year to let me do influencing, and I’ll make this work. I’ve had other jobs and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to try to make Instagram my career.’
It was important to me that my parents were OK with my decision, so that’s why I asked my dad, even though technically I was old enough to do whatever I wanted. Yes, I’d become a lot more independent, but anything like that I would still run past them.
My dad said that I had a year to prove to him that I could make a living through Instagram and support myself financially – but he gave me the benefit of the doubt.
My mum, too, was really supportive. They both knew that I wanted different things from life, and they’ve always backed me 100 per cent.
I began to dedicate all my time to being an influencer: I was posting once a day, with different outfits and different backgrounds. By giving influencing a proper go, I was betting on myself – and that gamble paid off quickly. Within about a week of being home from Ibiza, I hit 20,000 followers, and from then on, that number spiralled up and up and up.
Hitting 20,000 followers on Instagram was a major milestone for me: brands started to message me to ask, ‘Hey, we’d really like to work with you, what’s your rate?’ I didn’t really know what that meant, but I spoke to a couple of other girls I knew on Instagram for advice on what I should charge. I started at about £100 for three posts, and later upped it to £200. The figure continued to rise as my follower count climbed.
PLT was one of those first companies asking me to post. They were the dream brand for any influencer to work with and always have been, so when they wanted to fit me and pay me to post (I think I started at £50 a post with them!), that was a huge moment for me. They were up-and-coming; everyone wanted to work with them or, if you weren’t an influencer, wanted to work for them. What they represented – with the branding, the pink logo, even their fun offices in Manchester – was really current and cool. They were the ‘it’ brand, and they’ve stayed that way because the people there understand what girls like me want. So, I’ve worked with PLT from the very start, which is amazing, given my relationship with them now – but we’ll get to that!
All this meant that, after reaching 20k followers, I was earning about £500 a month from my sponsored posts – a lot of money to me at the time. It had taken me a good while to get there, about four years, but now that I knew social media could become a job, I was going to do everything in my power to make it happen. And I’ve never had another job since.
So, really, it was a blessing in disguise that all that had happened with the gym – and even that Ibiza didn’t work out – because it gave me the chance to do what I really wanted to do.
• • •
A few weeks after coming back from Ibiza, I had another first, as I was invited to an influencer event. I was at my dad’s wedding reception, everyone dancing and drinking, when I got the DM from the hair and extension brand Beauty Works: ‘We’re going to a festival tomorrow and one of our girls has dropped out, we’d love you to come.’ That was another ‘Oh my God!’ moment. There was a wedding breakfast the next day, so at first I didn’t think I could make the festival. But when I told my dad about it, he encouraged me to go. He’s always been so supportive of me and my career. I had no outfit ready – and that event was the sort of thing I’d normally spend months in preparation for – but I made it work. I ended up in these burgundy cargo pants with a black lacy bodysuit and black wedged boots – they were just bits and bobs that I had in my bedroom. The next day, my mum dropped me off in Essex, I had my hair and make-up done by Beauty Works, and they took us to the festival for the day, which I just loved.
My parents have just always been so super supportive.
Back then, my parents would literally photograph all my Instagram content for me – my mum in particular, as I was still living with her. After a long shift at the police station, she’d come home and we’d go out together – Mum literally still in her work uniform – to shoot outfit photos somewhere like Starbucks, or at the service station in nearby Biggleswade, for my feed. Or, if we had more time, we’d go somewhere new like Cambridge for a content day, trying to get more pictures.
At first, my mum didn’t really understand Instagram, but she definitely got really good at taking photos – even though it wasn’t in her comfort zone to start with. We’d be shooting content – pictures and video – and my mum would get so embarrassed. People would be staring at me posing in a miniskirt and high heels in the middle of Cambridge city centre; I didn’t mind it, while she’d literally want the ground to swallow her up!
But after about six months, she saw the money coming in and how happy it was making me that I was growing on Instagram, and soon it was almost second nature to her – she’s really good at it! Even now, when I go home to visit, she’ll still take content for me, and so will my dad and my sister. Without them, I really would not have been able to have a successful Instagram account. At the time, living where I was in Langford, I didn’t really have any close friends nearby who could help me – so my family was the reason that I was able to grow and do what I did.
That’s not to say everyone in my family has got my job from the start! It took my nana a while to really get to grips with it. We joke in my family that I’ve always been the grandchild that’s been a bit disapproved of by the grandparents, as I was always the one wanting to wear make-up, or have my hair done in a more grown-up way, or wear certain clothes.
For example, when I was six or seven, I always wanted my mum to crimp my hair, and whenever she did, my grandma – my dad’s mum – would say, ‘Why do you do that to her hair? She’s too young!’ While my mum’s mum, my nana, would be asking me, ‘Why are you wearing those nails?’ Or, if I wore ripped jeans, ‘What are those?!’
So, my nana never quite understood what I was up to, and it was the same with my job at first … because it does sound a bit unusual to an older person that I post photos online and get paid for it. However, once she saw me in TV adverts for PLT, she understood it a lot more … thankfully! And now she is so on board with what I do. Sadly, my dad’s mum passed away, but I like to think that if she were alive today I’d be making her proud too.
These days, my job isn’t as carefree, but back then, because I was doing what I loved most, it felt easy – even though it was still a lot of work. I was taking pictures, which I loved doing and which came easily to me, and getting paid for it. There are so many more levels to what I do now, and – wonderful though it is, don’t get me wrong! – my work is much more complex and there is much more to juggle and consider. But starting out, it was just like a dream. Even my audience was at a really nice stage; as I’d find out, when you’re bigger, people will actually come to your account specifically to troll, whereas back then my following was just supportive and happy to be on the journey with me. Really, it’s a lesson: enjoy every stage of your journey, and don’t always be trying to rush on to the next one.
By that point, I was still living with my mum in Langford. It’s a lovely little village, but for me, living there felt claustrophobic. I couldn’t drive, so it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. Living in Hitchin, I had been able to walk everywhere: the town centre was a 10-minute walk from home, so was the gym … everything was so close.
I started to feel isolated and suffocated. I’d now reached about 120k followers on Instagram, but I felt I couldn’t really progress in my job because there weren’t many new locations or cool backgrounds where I could take pictures. I wasn’t networking and building relationships with businesses there, either. So, finally I decided: I’m going to move to Manchester.
I’d been spending quite a lot of time in the city – through the pageant world, I’d made friends with a girl who lived up there – and I’d quickly fallen in love with it. I started doing all sorts up there, staying with her or with other friends. I’d even get my lip filler there. That’s really where my relationship with Manchester began, which has led to me living nearby in Cheshire now.
In the process of spending so much time there, I became even more independent. I’d take the train there all the time and stay for weeks on end before I’d come home. I was never told off for doing that; my mum would just say, ‘As long as you’re happy and as long as you’re safe.’ And I always had to have my location on my phone switched on so she could see where I was; that was the mutual agreement we had. My mum was very, very particular about always knowing where I was. She just felt better knowing that if she needed to find me, she could – that was her police officer brain coming in.
So, I thought, I’m going to just go to Manchester, and told my parents my plans. Within a week of me saying that, I’d found an apartment and I was gone. I just packed my stuff and left, and that was it. I always think now that Mum’s never really processed that I’ve actually gone because it was such a quick thing! I just didn’t really give her a moment to say no.
• • •
How I got that apartment was quite a funny story: I went up to Manchester for one day to flat hunt. I did 10 viewings and hated them all; none of the properties were right. Then, as I was sat on a wall opposite a massive apartment block, eating my lunch and scrolling through Zoopla, the property website, I happened to look up for a moment.
Oh my God, I thought, that building in front of me is incredible – I would love to live there. It was stunning, all glass. Then I looked down to refresh the website on my phone, and a picture of that very same apartment building came up, advertising a one-bedroom apartment for £900 a month – just at random! I called the estate agent to say I was just outside, connected with them in person and walked up the stairs. I got that apartment the very same day. That was so much money and I wasn’t sure that I could afford it past the first few months, but I told them I would take it. I feel like that pressure made me work harder since I knew I had to earn enough money to pay that £900 a month in rent.
I do feel like I manifested that flat, which – the way I think of it – means having enough belief in yourself that things just fall into place. Because I find that when you have enough confidence, things just happen for you; and you never doubt that they’re going to happen – they will just happen.
I paid my first few months’ rent upfront with some money I had saved up while living at home – which I was lucky to be able to do, as not everyone can do that. After that, it was going to be up to me to pay my own rent; my parents weren’t going to support me. At that time I was making enough income from my Instagram to be able to live independently, but I knew it was still going to be a stretch. Again, I was striving for more than I could really achieve in that moment.
So maybe it’s not a total surprise that the first night I spent in my new Manchester apartment, I felt I’d made a massive mistake. I remember it so clearly: my dad had come up with me to help me move my stuff, then he dropped me off and I was in this apartment by myself. The silence was deafening. I had that anxious feeling in my stomach, like when I was little and would go to sleepovers and would want to come home. I thought, What have I done? Oh my God, what am I going to do? I want to go home. I hate this.
But the next day, I went to join the gym, then I went by the city centre, and I just got out and about and slowly started to get used to it all. Eventually I fell in love with that feeling of being alone – it made me feel really independent and like the world was my oyster. I could go out anytime and do whatever I wanted, and that was a really nice feeling.
That move to Manchester was one of the best things I ever did, without a doubt. It was scary, in a way, taking the chance that I would be earning enough to pay my rent once the first few months were up. But, as I’d hoped, it was helping my career too: with so many new locations to shoot at, my following was continuing to grow.
And, though I didn’t know it then, something else was about to happen that would change my life again …