As everyone knows, when you build up a following as an influencer, you can start to work with brands on sponsored content such as Instagram posts and Stories. The way I approach it is to align myself with only a very small number of brands – it just makes more sense to me and to my followers, as I’ll explain. So, these days, in terms of working with brands, it really is all about PrettyLittleThing, Beauty Works and Filter by Molly-Mae. They’re my main three focuses: PLT and Beauty Works as collaborations, and then Filter by Molly-Mae as my business – my baby!
It all sounds really simple – but that hasn’t always been the case …
When people come out of a big show like Love Island, they can get blindsided by the money and cheques that are coming forward. But you can’t get distracted by things like that – you have to focus on why you’re doing what you’re doing. In my case, I didn’t want to come out of the show and only think about making money moves, because as much as I’ve always wanted to do well for myself, that wouldn’t be authentic to me, and I wouldn’t stay relatable to my followers. That’s why I have had to say no to certain things, to stay true to myself.
Looking back, I’m proud of the way I’ve always stayed so true to myself. And I’ve done that because I’ve had a following for so many years that I’ve felt so much loyalty towards.
In the first few days after I came out of the villa, about 10 brands came forward and pitched for me to be their brand ambassador, which was so exciting. The deal I accepted in the end was not actually the highest in terms of a number – because I’ve never been interested in just making as much money as possible. For me, it has always been about making moves that were authentic and building the trust with my followers from the get-go. That’s something I’ve stuck to throughout my career.
I’ve spoken before about how I once turned down a £2 million deal to be the face of a clothing company. It was crazy! But I was never going to work with that brand. It didn’t represent me. I’d never bought clothes from them before. And I didn’t take their deal because I knew it wasn’t an authentic move. Even though it was still an incredible brand and one that so many girls would have dreamed to work with, it wasn’t the right fit for my brand.
When I talked on YouTube about turning down that big deal, so many people reacted – they were shocked. But the truth is, that’s something that Fran and I face most days, if not on the same scale: we have potential deals that Fran often won’t even put to me because she knows I won’t take them. A brand could come to me and offer to pay me however much money, but I still wouldn’t take it if I didn’t believe in them, because no amount of money is worth me ruining my relationship with my followers.
The moment you take something just for the pay cheque is when you start to become unfaithful to your followers – and I look at my followers as one big family, so I will always be loyal to them. That’s something I’ve always stayed true to: I only showcase clothes I would actually wear and products I actually love. I’d never put my name to something that I didn’t completely stand behind, and my followers can trust me in that.
Of course, when I left Love Island, it was PrettyLittleThing that I went with, becoming their new brand ambassador. There was no question that I was going with them, because they had believed in me from day one. They were the brand that really represented me, and always had – that was where my loyalties lay. As I’ve said, I had a relationship with PLT long before I went on the show, ever since they’d kitted me out with an Ibiza wardrobe when I went out there to work. In another funny twist, their head office is a stone’s throw from my very first apartment in Manchester, literally just around the corner.
Collaborating with PLT has really demonstrated to me the value of building a great working relationship over time. Because of this strong partnership, in the summer of 2021, I was announced as the brand’s creative director for the UK and EU. That day was insane – an absolute whirlwind. It was hard to take it all in, but it was definitely one of the best days of my life.
My transition to creative director had been in the planning for a good few months. I remember when Fran rang me. I was sat in my car in the driveway. ‘Umar’s just called me,’ she said (that’s the owner of PLT), ‘and he says he wants you to be the creative director.’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘Are you joking?’
I was with Maura at the time and told her what the call was about. We’re super supportive of each other, so her reaction was just the same as mine: ‘Oh my God. That’s insane!’
But none of us wanted to get too excited about it at the start, because we knew the deal would be in the works for a while. I knew the brand and what everyone’s roles were at PLT: what the buyers did, what the merchandisers did, what the social media team and the creative people did. So, when the role of creative director was raised, I did have quite a good understanding of what that might entail. But obviously, when we got down to the nitty-gritty, there were a lot of discussions about how we would do it, what my exact title would be and what the best course would be to make it all work. There’s so much more to getting the right deal done than anyone thinks, so it was a long process. But after many meetings and discussions, we managed to get it over the line.
Then, when we announced my new title, everything went just absolutely crazy. I was trending on Twitter as ‘Molly-Mae’ and ‘Money-Mae’ as well – which was ironic because, of course, when I came out of Love Island, ‘Money-Mae’ was trending for all the wrong reasons. But now people were calling me ‘Money-Mae’ in a positive way – because of the things I’ve done and achieved. Which really does show how things can turn around!
I made sure to appreciate it all so much, because I knew that in a couple of years’ time, I would look back and think, I’d do anything to relive that day again! It was just absolutely huge.
I think the announcement shocked a lot of people, in a good way. Because they knew me as an influencer, for me to become a director within a brand and take on more of a business role was a surprise. Again, it was what I always love: doing something different and outside of the box. That’s why it meant so much to me, too: I was really excited to be not just an influencer anymore, and to have more of a business role in a huge brand like that.
The brand is already so current and cool, so I was instantly excited to be able to put my creative spin on things. The role involves working with the marketing, studio, e-commerce and buying teams on campaign launches, product selections and styling. The team are flexible with what I want to do: if I want to go in and spend a full day in the office and go around every department to have a look at what they’re doing, the brand activations they’re working on, the new campaigns, I can do that. They’ve really been generous at letting me have a say with anything. So I can take the role wherever I want to take it – and I’m going to work very hard. In fact, there are loads of things I want to do that people probably wouldn’t expect. I really have a lot of plans, as you’ll see …
Beauty Works is a very sentimental collaboration to me. Just like that clothing brand after Love Island, a different hair brand offered me a lot of money during that period; but as with PLT, I’d worked with Beauty Works from the start, so I was adamant that I wanted to keep working with them.
It’s just such an incredible relationship, and I do really feel that loyalty is something that has given me momentum through the years: that my followers can see I only talk about products that I’ve used and that I’ve loved for years.
Beauty Works was the first company that invited me to an influencer event, as I mentioned, and one of the first companies to pay me. I remember Penny, the owner, telling me at that event, ‘We just feel you’re going to be really big. We have faith in you.’ Even when I had 20k followers on Instagram, they were gifting me hair and paying me to do posts. They weren’t really working with many girls at that point at all, let alone one with a really small following, so maybe they just saw potential in me – and, of course, that I loved styling hair.
A lot of influencers struggle with their own hair – some will even have hairdressers come to do their hair and then pretend they’ve done it themselves! Whereas I was quite lucky in that I had learned how to do it myself, partly because I’ve always been interested in styling – picking up tips whenever I could by watching YouTube – and partly because of that first job I had at the hairdresser’s. Ever since that early YouTube video of me pin-curling my hair blew up, people have been interested to see how I style it (this started long before Love Island). And now here I am with my own shade of extensions with Beauty Works! Which just goes to show that even if you can’t see it at the time, everything you do can help lead you to where you need to be.
From then on, we started doing posts where I would style my hair with their tools in videos for them. There is one Instagram video that I filmed early on that got millions and millions of views – I’m in a brown top curling my hair at my friend’s apartment in Manchester. Beauty Works still use that video now.
I think now that they had been trying for a while to find someone with long hair who could style it quite well, too. And I’ve always had a passion for hair and was quite good at doing it, which they really liked; they didn’t need to give me much guidance with my content – I kind of just took a brief and went where I wanted to with it. So, I felt like I was nobody at the time, but Penny and her husband, Martin, really did back me, which I’ve always appreciated.
Every single time I do something bigger with a brand, part of me thinks, This is where it stops now. Surely this will be the last step a brand wants to take with me! But then, every time, it doesn’t stop: more keeps happening. I’ve gone from being gifted by these brands, to working with them on a paid level, to being offered deals to be their ambassadors, to now being the creative director of one.
On one level, I know why it’s working. If there’s one thing I know inside out, it’s Instagram. I really understand the platform and so I can really share myself, my style, my life – and the brands that I believe in, which I am so lucky to get to do. I’m loyal, we partner together so well, brands believe in me, and I believe in them. But I also think it’s because – despite those anxious moments when I think it’s all going to stop! – I believe that things will happen for me, and that I can help make them happen. In the same way I talk about manifesting the reality you want, I do feel that belief – confidence – has helped me tread my own path as an influencer.
My dream was to work with brands in new ways, and together we have achieved that: Beauty Works hasn’t had an ambassador partner with them in the way I do before. I’ve worked with PLT consistently for years now and, at the time of writing, I’ve put out nine collections with them – which is the most any ambassador has done for the brand.
The consistency in my attitude towards work has never changed. If anything, it has grown stronger: I am more excited about what I do, and what the future could hold, than I’ve ever been before. I’m not competitive in some things, but with Instagram, I am! Because I’ve found something I love and which suits me too, I think it’s one area where I tell myself, I will be the best I can at this.
For me, doing that in a way that has longevity is about always focusing on the bigger picture, and knowing that decisions I make in my career now can really impact my future. I could have taken on so much more work in recent years. But I’ve always understood that things can be detrimental if you do them incorrectly – taking on too many commitments, or associating yourself with too many brands. That applies to whatever you’re doing: establishing longevity is about being knowledgeable when it comes to what’s going to accelerate you, and what’s going to hold you back.
Soon after coming out of Love Island, I started to think about launching my own business. As much as I loved working with other brands – and still do – I already knew that when you have your own business, no one can turn to you and say, ‘Actually, we don’t want to work with you anymore’ because you’re the boss!
So, now I love doing both: working with other brands and on my own business. The benefit of the collaborations is that I get to partner with people with different skills or with different experience. And I actually feel that sometimes it’s nice that some of the control is taken out of my hands.
When you have your own business, it’s not really like that: I’m the boss of my company. Every day, I put as much effort as I can into it, and I’m the person that can decide how far it goes – which also means that the responsibility is entirely on me. And if the day comes that I don’t really do Instagram anymore, it’s what I’ll put all of my effort into.
When Fran and I first talked about the idea of me launching a business, I remember her suggesting make-up. But it just didn’t feel like the right avenue for me. I mean, I love make-up, but I’m not particularly good at it! So, I didn’t feel strongly enough about make-up to make it my business. But what I did feel passionate about – and what I did feel would work – was fake tan.
And I felt there was a real gap in the market for a new, better fake tan that had a bit of a different price point. There were a lot of cheap fake tans out there, and a lot of really expensive ones, but I felt like that middle price bracket was missing. I’d also heard a lot of people complain about that nasty fake tan smell. So to fill that gap, we created this great formula with a really fresh, bespoke scent. This wasn’t something that was already on the shelf to buy; it was something totally new: a tan with a different scent and a different price point. And that’s something important to any new business – you need something to differentiate your product from everything else out there.
It wasn’t an easy process: we worked for months before putting anything out there. We really worked on hard on getting the bespoke formula right: making sure it was good for people with eczema, making sure it was nourishing, and of course making sure that it smelled good.
Launching Filter by Molly-Mae was a really proud moment for me. I’d watch people reviewing it on YouTube, and they loved the product so much. We’ve definitely created something a little bit different from the fake tans out there already – that’s why, when we recently did a relaunch, everybody came back to buy it – so I feel really proud to have my name on it.
I have such a vision for Filter by Molly-Mae. I really see it being the next go-to tanning brand that you see in all the supermarkets and high-end retailers, and I envision us growing the range of products we offer to take it worldwide. I see myself with my own huge warehouse and beautiful office and a much bigger team. Again, it’s my manifesting – I know we’ll get there!
In the meantime, I have so much more to do. As with any business, I have to keep investing, both in terms of time and money. I’m still posting everything onto the brand’s Instagram myself because I don’t trust anyone else to do it – I’m a massive control freak with it, because I’m such a perfectionist! And I don’t think everybody realises that: when you’re running a business, everything you get is actually plunged straight back into it for the first few years at least. People wait for a long time to make money from a business, knowing that one day it will hopefully repay them, but it’s a bet that will take a good few years to come good. So when friends say they want to start their own businesses, I definitely encourage them – and also explain that it’s not as easy as people may think! ‘Go for it, do it’ I tell them, ‘but don’t do it because you want to get some cash out of it quickly.’ Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. There are plenty of other ways that you could make a quick bit of cash, and starting a business isn’t one of them. It’s going to provide for you in years to come, if all goes well – but it’s not an overnight thing.
There’s so much that goes into a business, it’s crazy. But I’m so glad I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to do this, because I’ve learned so much.