Meredith Vliet

I would attribute my success to specificity. In college, I had a public speaking professor who wrote me this really great review after I finished her course and mentioned specificity about me and kind of my success in her course. I feel like that always stuck with me, and I do think that's kind of what got me to where I am, is that I figured out exactly what I wanted to do and got really specific about it. And then I just kind of stayed really persistent and consistent with that, and it helped me figure out exactly what brands I wanted to work for.

I think the best career advice I got was from one of my professors in college when I didn't have any beauty industry experience yet. I had only worked in restaurants because I was living in New York City and I really needed the money, so I didn't have any internships under my belt yet. But I was at fashion school and I was asking everyone how do I get into a beauty company. He was my professor in a course around cosmetics, and he recommended making a beauty Instagram. I think that actually really, really helped me because when I went into the interview for my internship at my previous brand at Erna Laszlo, I showed them some photos from my beauty Instagram. I think it helped, kind of gave me a little bit of that portfolio element, just having something to show. And then it helped me network with people in my industry to kind of accelerate my name in the beauty industry quicker than I probably would have. So I think that was probably one of the best pieces of advice I got in college.

I would say my advice would be to build a personal brand, to figure out what excites you and what interests you, and to kind of run with that. Coming back to the example of myself, I mean, I use my passion for beauty. I would buy beauty products, and then I would film them, take photos of them, and make educational content, and I feel like that can be applied to really anything. So my advice would be get very specific, really sit down and figure out what gets you excited, and write it down. Draft out a high-level plan, and then just kind of run with it, and try to post on social media to really get your name out there and build the personal brand piece.

The biggest challenges I would say is that the skincare industry is very saturated. There's thousands of brands popping up every day. So I think the challenge for anyone in the skincare industry is standing out in that saturated space. But I think it's an opportunity to get really specific about point of difference and messaging, making it clear for the consumer what benefits you're going to give them with your products and being truthful about it. I think that's really important. Transparency, I mean, that's another value that really matters to me, both on the brand side developing products and also as a consumer. I think it's really important to feel like companies are being transparent with you when you're spending money on their product.

I would say fairness is a big one. Hard work, commitments, and authenticity is a big one. Those are kind of the main ones that come to mind. Transparency is another value that really matters to me, both on the brand side developing products and also as a consumer. I think it's really important to feel like companies are being transparent with you when you're spending money on their product.