How These Entrepreneurs Made Millions Exclusively on Social Media

Get Behind a Purpose

Three months before launch, the sisters behind LA-based fashion brand Doen, Margaret and Katherine Kleveland, took their brand to social media with shot-on-film, vintage-inspired photography and luxe, modern, boho dresses and blouses any woman would covet, and word-of-month spread fast. Through DMs and tags, the brand grew organically (and internationally) and their mission of female empowerment — a women-run fashion business with women-run factories in a male-led industry — became a story to tell. Three months later, at launch time, they were featured in the NY Times’ T Magazine.

“We use our social media platforms to hear from and engage with our customers in order to know what people are loving, how items are fitting, thoughts on fabric and so on. It’s important for us to be open with our customers and it’s allowed us to build trust with our community. Our customer knows they can email or message us online and receive a quick yet personal response,” they told Harper’s Bazaar UK last May. Last summer the direct-to-consumer brand partnered up with Net-a-Porter and recently opened shop in Brentwood, nearly five years after launch.

Partner Up

What started as a social action campaign for International Women’s Day in 2017 became a powerful digital movement that has impacted countless women and girls worldwide. Meena Harris, founder of the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, used her super skills in grassroots organizing (she is the niece of Senator Kamala Harris and was an organizer for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign) to sell ‘Phenomenal Woman’ T-shirts that would benefit causes close to her heart: educational and healthcare equity; criminal justice reform; gender parity in STEM; reproductive health; and political representation. She talks about how she used digital platforms to spread the word by partnering with several non-profit beneficiaries, getting celeb support (strategically) and thinking like an entrepreneur to grow in this Vogue Australia article. The fundraising initiative has since raised money for the organizations such as Girls Who Code, the United State of Women, the Essie Justice Group, Families Belong Together, Planned Parenthood, Native Voices Rising and the Dr. Maya Angelou Foundation.

Be an Original

Self-taught artist Jenna Rainey inspired a major watercolor comeback when she started posting time-lapse videos of her bright and colorful floral strokes in 2013. Her refreshingly down-to-earth and quirky personality helped define her brand and her willingness to share how she does it through online tutorials and workshops turned her hobby into a global creative powerhouse. She started up her own design studio in Southern California and became the best-selling author of a series of watercolor books. She’s also a YouTuber, host to several online courses (including three for Brit + Co), and licenses her art to brands like Target, Staples and Papyrus. She shares her licensing secrets in her popular Brand + Brand course.

Turn Followers Into Shoppers

Natalie Ellis and Dr. Danielle Canty, cofounders of BossBabe, a community for women in business, started out posting ambitious quotes on Instagram and turned it into a multimillion-dollar business. How? By cultivating their follower’s buying power. Ellis lays out her secrets to making the most of selling on Instagram stories and Facebook (“Don’t make your audience jump through hoops to buy from you”) in this Fast Company article.

Break Your Industry’s Mold

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I have pink and purple hair! 💜💕💜💕 The other day I realized how different my life is than most people’s now. It didn’t used to be that way. It was such a slow transition that I didn’t even realize it had separated from the norm so much. I’m about to talk about money and if that’s uncomfortable for you, it’s time for you to scroll on. One day Michael and I had finally earned what we inappropriately call, “f@€K you money” (OMG I said it and tell me you watch Billions). That’s the amount it would take for you (specifically you, we are all different), to have enough money to live outside of the social norm — in whatever way brings you the most joy and fulfillment. To be able to use your money to no longer conform to what others want from you. And, dang if it isn’t expensive. Living outside the norm is NOT what most people do so it will invite the worst of others insecurities to come and play. It’s not what our government or society wants because people with their own ideas for their life don’t conform. Make no mistake, it costs money. And I, personally, love that M and I earned it for our family. Yep. I’m going here, too. We earned every single dollar and there’s not a thing that the people who tried to stop us can do about it. Not the people who hurt us in our past. Not those that wish us ill now. That success and mindset are ours to build on. We use our money to provide a lifestyle that feels like pink and purple hair in a blonde and brunette world. Our life looks insane to a lot of people. The way we live makes some (a lot) uncomfortable. We don’t send our kids to school like normal families. We don’t have a stay-at-home parent like normal. We don’t spend or invest like normal people. We don’t make choices based on normal criteria. It looks insane if you don’t know us and what we want out of our life. To us, though, it feels like bliss…even when it doesn’t. So here’s to being a physical representation of how I feel. I reject normal. I resist (not in the modern feminist way, let’s get that straight). If you’re made to stand out, it’s probably about time that you start. Stop wasting your life living by a standard you didn’t choose

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A post shared by Lindsay Teague Moreno | LTM (@lindsayteague) on Mar 9, 2020 at 10:58am PDT

Lindsay Teague Moreno built a seven-figure income selling Young Living Essential oils using only social media (with three little ones at home) and now her sales are projected to bring in $250 million this year. She is the author of the best-selling book Getting Noticed, a road map for building a business from scratch and has a new book Boss Up! coming out in May. In this video on Entrepreneur she talks about how she broke from the mold when it came to selling essential oils in an industry that needed a refresh.

Behold the Trust Factor

Jenna Kutcher traded her corporate job as a health-and-wellness leader at Target to pursue a passion for photography. After running a wedding photog gig, she moved on to teaching others how to set up a photography business and how to market their business via email and social media. Her digital marketing know-how, never straying from her niche audience, and talking with brutal honesty on social (her heartfelt response to a body-shaming troll after she suffered a miscarriage went viral and her following grew 5Xs). A podcast, courses, and an online shop later, Jenna Kutcher LLC was projected to make $5.5 million in revenue last year.

When Algorithms Change, Try Good Old-Fashioned Email

Emily Ley, founder of the super-popular Simplified Planner, grew her Etsy audience by sharing her products and her personal story on Facebook and Twitter in 2008. She has since grown to 250,000 Instagram followers, 65,000 Facebook fans, and 10,000 Twitter followers but growing an organic audience online (as we all know) has become a challenge. “Social media algorithms have changed, so you don’t always show up in someone’s feed, but if you have someone’s email address, you will always show up in their inbox,” she told Inc. She uses MailChimp to automate her newsletters and set up a monthly coaching program with tips to help customers organize their lives. The win? It has shown to turn one-time customers into forever fans.

Have a social media success story to share? Tell us @BritandCo!