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, where he gives cosmetics tutorials to males and females, and four.6 million Instagram followers, in which his average image has round 200,000 likes. But Gutierrez isn’t content material to forestall there: He also currently released his beauty logo referred to as Lunar Beauty, selling lipstick, lip gloss, and make-up palettes.
Along the manner he set some other document accomplishment: Gutierrez was the first ever male star to associate with Maybelline for an advertising and marketing campaign, showing off his mascara talents alongside fellow make-up 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 health care provider. But along the manner when I observed make-up and started out 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 became 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 subsequent. But after dressing up in drag for the primary time at 21, which turned into additionally his first revel in with make-up, he says he made up his thoughts: “This is amusing.”
Doubling down on social
While operating the counter at make-up businesses, Gutierrez also centered on providing on-hand make-up guidelines to an online target market — and saw his social media following start to upward push.
“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 into bringing in, he drove on. And 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 simply knew I become homosexual. That’s like the funny element about it. I had no concept. I simply knew I was specific from the alternative boys. I wanted to play with dolls. And being gay become 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 what it way 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.
