I didn't know who I was supposed to talk to. But what really encouraged me to make the change was actually when my Instagram page, I don't even know what was going on. I think they were doing some kind of glitch where my account was compromised and my page got deleted. I actually cried that day and lost 100,000 at the time. I was bad at actually counting up the hours I was spending on this. So when the Instagram account went down, that was a rude awakening for me because I realized just how much time and effort I spent trying to grow this community and provide value to people. And at that time, I wasn't even really looking at my revenue numbers. It was just about moving this thing forward. So once the account went down, that's when I was really focused on building a brand because I needed to build a standalone community. I need a brand that has an identity and not just something that's dependent on a social media platform to exist.
So that was a really rude awakening. It was pretty... I actually cried that day. The way I got it back was also ridiculous. Try and explain to them I was a real person and I had this community, and I wasn't a spam account. And eventually, I got it back. So once I got it back, I feel like my engine was just raring to go and I was like I've got to do this. I have to not be scared. A selection of high pigmented lip products from MFMG Cosmetics. Tomi Gbeleyi leveraged her sales and marketing background to find and cold call beauty companies to find the right production partner. MFMG Cosmetics Felix: When someone wants to build a brand outside of just their social media following, where did you find you need to invest your time differently? Tomi: At that time, I just had this blog and I had Instagram, there was no clear identity of the brand, so the first step was building in terms of the marketing materials. The first thing I actually did was build a brand book.