Manuel Gutierrez, aka Manny MUA to his fans, is one of the world’s essential makeup professionals on social media. He has nearly five million subscribers on his YouTube channel. He gives cosmetics tutorials to males and females and has 6 million Instagram followers, and his average image has around 200,000 likes. But Gutierrez isn’t content material to forestall there: He recently released his beauty logo called Lunar Beauty, selling lipstick, lip gloss, and makeup palettes.
He set some other document accomplishments along with the manner: Gutierrez was the first-ever male star to associate with Maybelline for an advertising and marketing campaign, showing off his mascara talents alongside fellow makeup persona Shayla Mitchell. So how did this 27-12 months-old smash into the splendor business?
Manny’s not likely beginning Gutierrez began his profession a long way away from the sector of beautifying himself or others. He became looking to go to medical college. “I truly nearly did visit medical faculty,” he told MONEY. “I got my B.S. In fitness technological know-how, and I desired to preserve. I wanted to be a plastic healthcare provider. But when I observed makeup and started operating at Sephora and MAC, it clicked for me. It changed into something that I changed into actually happy approximately. It becomes a passion. I changed into like, ‘Okay, properly, this has to manifest for me.’”
That period after his undergraduate research turned out to be a critical time. Gutierrez constantly had a hobby in “something innovative,” however, he says, “I couldn’t draw, I couldn’t paint. I was an athlete growing up and truly into college.” Without a creative outlet, he didn’t understand what to do subsequently. But after dressing up in drag for the first time at 21, which turned into additionally his first revel in makeup, he says he made up his thoughts: “This is amusing.”
While operating the counter at makeup businesses, Gutierrez also centered on providing on-hand makeup guidelines to an online target market — and saw his social media the following start to push upward. “I changed into operating at MAC, and I bear in mind I told myself if I can hit a hundred,000 [YouTube] subscribers, I would be able to go away,” he says because the sales coming in from YouTube ads might allow him to stop his day process. It wasn’t a clean transition: “I keep in mind when I cease, I simply stopped going, and I was like ‘Oh my God, I’m so scared, what do I do?’”
But searching at the amount of money he changed to bringing in, he drove on. He even added his mum and dad into his enterprise, notwithstanding the truth that it has been tight for him to pop out as gay in an entirely spiritual circle of relatives. “I in no way knew I become homosexual. That’s like the funny element about it. I had no concept. I knew I was specific from the alternative boys. I wanted to play with dolls. And being gay becomes terrible. So I by no means genuinely wanted even to assume that I was,” he says. “It becomes tough.” Now, years later, the whole lot’s distinctive. “Luckily, I work with my parents complete-time, so it’s sincerely cool.”
A leader in the enterprise
In tandem with growing popularity, Gutierrez is blowing up expectancies of how to symbolize cosmetics and be a self-described “boy beauty vlogger.” He’s considered one of few male leaders in a lady-dominated enterprise, and he sees that as a bonus.
