Gina Elmanasterly

I would say remaining consistent and sticking to this one thing. It's very easy to get distracted and very easy to give up. That's why a lot of people give up too soon. There were a lot of times where I put things on hold, and I didn't know if I wanted to continue doing this, and I was like, this is too much. I worked two jobs, which was so hectic, and had to put my social life on hold for a little bit. There's been a lot of sacrifice, but I would say the one thing is that I kept going. As cliche as it sounds, I didn't give up, and I was very persistent. So yeah, again, it's all consistency and discipline.

Someone told me that people usually say it's good to follow what you're passionate about, but what people don't understand is that even while you're working on something that you love and you are passionate about, there are going to be a lot of days where that passion is just not there. You're going to feel like you don't want to do this anymore, or maybe you don't love this anymore, but that's not true. It's not all about passion. From my experience, I'm very passionate about Fully Fyne, but when things are super challenging, the passion is not going to be there every single day. So you just have to have discipline. I think the best career advice would be to learn how to be more disciplined and to have discipline to stay consistent in what you're doing. Over time, with this consistency, you're going to see results. It's important at the beginning to do something that you love, but the passion is not going to be there every single day.

I think challenges as an indie beauty brand is the competition, because competing with these major big brands in Sephora and Ulta Beauty, especially as a startup where these brands have funding and millions of dollars in marketing, and as a startup you don't have that, so it can be super challenging when it comes to marketing. Also connections really matter. A lot of people might have more connections in the industry, connected to retailers or other opportunities. I would say networking and the competition is very challenging. But opportunity-wise, nowadays with social media, even though it's very challenging, the opportunity is there. As long as you're very consistent with content creation and doing all the things on social media nowadays, it's a great opportunity for everyone to start a business online. I think it's easier than back then. But it could also be very challenging with all these bigger companies also being on social media and putting in a bigger budget in marketing than you have. So the opportunity's there, but it's also very challenging at the same time.