fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetitor.com article, huda hudabeauty.com photo credit
The majestic stars in the sky are so endless, we can never truly know how many there are.
The human stars that keep emerging are so impressive that we don’t know who all of them are, but we should.
Especially when it is someone who shines as brilliant as Huda Kattan.
Others have known about her and followed her for some time.
As of this writing she has over 25 million Instagram followers, more than 2.5 million YouTube subscribers, and over 45,000 Twitter followers.
Yes, Kim Kardashian knows about her as well.
Huda Kattan is an American makeup artist, beauty blogger, and entrepreneur. She is the founder of the cosmetics line Huda Beauty.
Ms. Kattan was born on October 2, 1983 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, as one of four children.
Her parents are both from Iraq.
Huda graduated from the University of Michigan, Dearborn and was struggling to find direction in her life. She had a degree in finance but didn’t have the passion to pursue a career in it. Her sister Mona convinced her to go to school to study makeup since it had always been a passion of hers.
In 2006 our luminary moved to Dubai, since her father was offered a teaching position there. A few years later, Huda moved to Los Angeles, where she studied makeup artistry.
The early signs of future success were there. Among her clients were celebrities such as Eva Longoria and Nicole Richie.
It apparently ignited a spark.
Being closer to family can be an important lure. Huda returned to Dubai where she became employed by Revlon as a makeup artist. During her time there, she worked with a number of luxury brands including Cartier and Mercedes.
In April 2010, upon the advice of one of her sisters, she started a beauty-related WordPress blog which she named “Huda Beauty” on which she would post makeup tutorials and tips.
A star is born. A star though only human, can always shine brighter. In Huda’s case, eventually, much brighter.
It was time to take risks. In 2013, Huda founded a cosmetics line which, like her blog, is also called Huda Beauty.
Then the breakthrough came.
Her first product, a series of false eyelashes, was released through Sephora.
The Huda Beauty label achieved success with the sales of the false eyelashes, which were famously worn by Kim Kardashian.
Her ascension came to the attention of the global news leader cnn.com who shares, “Her commercial breakthrough came in 2013, when she teamed up with sisters Mona and Alya — who act as Huda Beauty’s global president and chief Instagram officer, respectively — to create a line of false eyelashes. They flew off shelves and caught the eye of Kim Kardashian herself.”
Very impressive. What an enticing new global platform.
Social media outreach in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE continue to be very popular and a perfect platform to express oneself and sell your products.
According to Forbes’ recent list of “America’s Richest Self-Made Women,” seven out of 60 made their fortunes in cosmetics and skincare. One of them is Huda who was ranked number 37.
She is in great company joining Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg and 20-year-old Kylie Jenner – whose estimated $900 million fortune also comes from a beauty empire.
Huda was also ranked #1 on the “2017 Influencer Instagram Rich List”, earning $18,000 for each post of sponsored content.
Incredible.
Her estimated personal net worth is over $550 million and Huda Beauty is valued at upwards of $1 billion per Forbes.
Following in the footsteps of the famous Kardashian sisters, Huda is part of the reality television series world.
Sure to be expected.
It was the wise thing to do.
It was inevitable.
In 2018, Huda began starring in her own original Facebook Watch reality series entitled Huda Boss, alongside her family.
Okay, we are becoming star struck so we began to watch the reality series online.
Overall, we liked the series. It did have the usual suspects of demonstrating the love and closeness between the family members including her enjoyable father who has a nice sense of humor.
They were even honest enough to speak of one of their early major business errors.
One of the main storylines in the first two episodes of Huda Boss is a failed batch of Huda Beauty’s concealer. The orders had already been made when Huda noticed how streaky the formula was and that it oxidized to an orange hue on her skin. Huda had to choose between releasing the product to the market or accepting her losses and starting over from scratch.
The loss was estimated at close to $2 million. Ouch.
Starting over was a very honorable move. Her personality and values are one of the reasons why so many love the show. The popular series attracts up to 9 million viewers on Facebook Watch.
Count us among them.
Watching Huda’s life really made us think and reflect.
We suspect for most of us, as we reach an age of awareness, this great life that someone like her lives with fame, riches, beauty and family is what we all want. It was supposed to be plan A but, at least in our case, we didn’t remotely get there.
That increases our admiration for her. She was not born of wealth, she toiled in college like so many of us but with the encouragement of her sisters and the support of her family she took some risks and clearly made some great decisions.
One of the most important decisions that she made was after she graduated from college, got a good job in finance, became disillusioned and decided to quit and chart a different course.
In the same scenario, how many of us would have played it safe reasoning, in this economy (any economy is a good excuse) isn’t it good to have a nice paying job with benefits? We would have medicated ourselves on the weekends with cable, big screen TVs, football, parties and travel and then Monday go back to a job that we didn’t really like.
Be honest, was that you when you were young? It was that way with us, to our regret.
So when we look at highly successful people like Huda who walk near the same sidewalks that we do, breathe the same air and inhabit the same earth (even if it’s exclusive Dubai); that our friends is where the similarities end.
When it really mattered, she did what she needed to do to change her life and look at the results.
If only we could be so lucky? Shutter that thought. It is not about luck.
Yes Huda deals in beauty foundation but the greatest foundation that she had was the love of her family and sisters and the most powerful foundation that she built was to leave the conventional, take risks and follow what she loves.
That door our friends, especially when we are young, is swung wide open for virtually all of us.
Fear aside, like Huda, we just need to passionately walk through it.
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OPENING PHOTO hudabeauty.com photo credit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huda_Kattan
https://en.vogue.me/culture/huda-kattan-9-facts-about-her/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/health/huda-kattan-dubai-beauty-boom/index.html
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/huda-kattan.html
https://nypost.com/2018/09/11/how-huda-kattan-became-the-kim-kardashian-of-dubai/
