How a Struggling Single Mom Turned Beauty Blogging into a Six-Figure Career

In 2014, Ellarie Noel was building a following on Instagram as a beauty influencer when the Atlanta, Georgia-based mother of one was laid off from her job working in business development for a third-party tour-booking company. Although the experience was painful, a trip invitation from Motive Cosmetics helped soften the blow — and gave her hope that she could build a beauty career: She ended up not applying for a new job.

"I just felt like what I was doing was going to lead to something," says the 31-year-old — and she was right. Ellarie, as she's simply known to her followers, now earns an income in the mid-six figures and is one of the biggest beauty celebrities on the Internet, with an Instagram following of 1.3 million, built in part by being one of the first influencers to create tutorial videos on the social-media platform.

Like many in her field, Ellarie has several streams of income, including sponsored posts and collaborations with brands like CoverGirl, which recently featured her as a model for its drugstore displays. Her 6-year-old daughter Zara, nicknamed Yoshidoll, even has a following of her own, and the two of them have gone viral for their mommy-daughter hair tutorials. Here, Ellarie explains how her child got involved in the business, the challenges of being a woman of color in the beauty world, and how that can lead to competition among her fellow influencers.

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Ellarie Noel has more than 1.3 million Instagram followers, which she built partly because she was one of the first beauty bloggers to post tutorial videos. She is also known for her tutorials with her daughter, Zara, nicknamed Yoshidoll.

Creative Soul Photography

You were working around the clock as you built your brand. When did you realize you were taking on more than you could handle?

I think it was when my daughter, maybe last year, started making comments about how I'm always on my phone or I'm always on the computer. People would come over and she'd be like, "Mom is always on her computer," and it was making me feel really guilty — because I knew that what I was doing was providing for her, but she didn't quite get it. So I pulled back a little bit. I stopped taking as many jobs as I wanted to. She understands it more now. When Christmas rolls around, she's like, "Oh, now I see why you work so hard."

Speaking of your daughter, she plays a part in your videos and she's got her own emerging brand, too — how did she get involved in what you do?

When I started my channel, she would just hop up on my lap, and sometimes I would keep the footage in the video, and people would compliment her and say they loved her hair. I know people have reservations about putting their kids on social media, but she's my proudest accomplishment, so of course I'm going to show her off to everybody.

How does she react when people recognize her?

Sometimes she's super excited — she'll take pictures, she'll ask them if they follow her on Instagram, she'll spell out her name so people can follow her. Even if they don't recognize her, if someone says, "Aww, you're so cute," she'll be like, "Are you following me on Instagram?"

Is she ever resistant about filming videos? She's 6 — she must get tired or cranky.

Honestly for a 6-year-old she has her own little work ethic. I ask her every day if she wants to stop doing videos — she's like, "No, how will people be able to see me on TV? I can't do that to my fans."

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Mom shaming can be particularly bad on social media. Do you get any haters or trolls?

If it's a video that went viral and got like maybe over a million views on my page, I'll get a lot of random people and I usually don't say anything back unless it's a video with me and my daughter. I know that some people say stuff just to say it. And even if they do believe that I shouldn't have my daughter up there, that's a decision they can make when they have their own children.

You tweeted a while back that you had identity issues about your hair and you mentioned your daughter does too. What issues are those?

[My sister's] hair is like my daughter's — it can get really fine and straight, or, if she washes it, it gets really curly and long. I didn't even really know my core texture — my hair had been permed since I was in elementary school. But still even with perms I didn't feel like it looked as beautiful as hers.

I stopped getting perms about a year and change ago, and my daughter kind of inspired me to. She did have a little period when her best friend had really straight hair, and she felt she wanted smooth hair and she wanted lighter skin, and I'm like, "Oh no. I know this happens sometimes, but what do I do?" On her Instagram page, I asked her followers to take pictures [and] write comments about how beautiful she is to boost her self-esteem a little bit. As soon as she read all those things, I was like, "So what did you learn?" She was like, "I learned that I love my hair, and my hair is beautiful, and that there are people who want their hair to be like mine."

Ellarie says working in the beauty industry can be challenging, because brands tend to work with few women of color.

@Ellarie

What are some other challenges of being a woman of color working in the beauty world?

It's just very minimal as far as how we're represented. You'll scroll pages and pages [on Instagram] of people that are lighter-complected. And you'll see maybe one. It can be discouraging, but I feel like if I let it discourage me earlier on I probably wouldn't have even done this.

Our categories are a little bit more competitive, because brands don't tend to work with all of us. I just feel like a brand will choose one and then have that one person speak for the whole shade range. It's frustrating at times, especially because there's a lot of brown girls, women of color, who have different undertones, different skin types, different everything.

Have you ever felt like a brand has selected you to speak for an entire shade range?

Yeah. It's obviously a blessing to be invited anywhere or work with these great brands, but I don't want to feel like the token. I would like to see more people like me represented.

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Does this ever cause friction among beauty influencers who are women of color?

I don't feel like women of color should feel like we're competing against each other. I wish we could come together more, collab more, bring each other up more, but the brands kind of make it that way. I just feel like there's room for everybody.

Are you seeing any signs that the industry's becoming more inclusive? Rihanna recently launched Fenty, a super inclusive line of 40 foundation shades, and all those photos went viral of the darker ones out of stock.

It's more than just having a shade. It's your whole branding and promotion including everybody and not just [the] three girls that you feel like are your demographic. Even if a company [does] have a wide range that represents us, if their promotion for it [doesn't] include us, we're still not going to know. For Fenty, to come out on your first go with 40 shades, and then your promo reel has redheads and blondes and dark-skinned women — anybody who's anybody is going to feel like, "Oh, well that girl looks like me — I want to buy her stuff," because she's showing that she represents all girls. And I feel like if all makeup brands did that, everything would be selling off the shelves.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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