Molly Mae: How She Became Creative Director Of PLT At 22
Molly-Mae Hague, UK's top Instagram influencer and Creative Director of PrettyLittleThing, discusses her unprecedented rise, the trade-offs of success, and her grounded approach to business, relationships, and personal growth despite public scrutiny.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Early Life and Ambition in Hitchin
Move to Manchester and Early Influencer Career
Mindset on Time, Work Ethic, and Opportunity Filtering
Relationship with Manager Fran and Long-Term Vision
Love Island Experience and Unprecedented Post-Show Success
The Drive for More: Ambition vs. Contentment
Small Social Circle and Trust in the Public Eye
Trade-offs of Success: Trolling and Paparazzi Experiences
Maintaining Peace of Mind and Authenticity on Social Media
Decision to Remove Cosmetic Filler and Its Impact
Dealing with Imposter Syndrome and Learning Business
Financial Lessons and Philanthropic Endeavors
Becoming Creative Director of PrettyLittleThing
The Burglary and Impact on Safety and Privacy
Relationship with Tommy Fury and Future Aspirations
Advice to Younger Self and Continuous Striving
5 Key Concepts
Building Audience Trust
In the influencing industry, being successful hinges on strict filtering of opportunities, only promoting products or brands one genuinely uses and believes in. This authenticity earns the audience's trust, which is more valuable than short-term financial gains from unaligned deals.
The 'More' Mindset
This describes a personality trait of constantly striving for the next achievement, where reaching one goal immediately leads to desiring a bigger one. While it fuels ambition and great accomplishments, it can also make it challenging to find happiness and contentment in the present moment.
Maintaining Relatability
Despite increasing material success, Molly-Mae maintains relatability with her diverse audience by being transparent about her struggles, bad days, and personal life on platforms like YouTube. This balance of aspiration and honesty allows followers to connect with her on a deeper level.
Combating Imposter Syndrome
When in intimidating professional settings, Molly-Mae addresses feelings of inadequacy by being transparent about what she doesn't know and not being afraid to ask questions. This approach allows her to learn quickly and leverage her unique perspective and expertise.
Relationship Trust
The most important element for a successful relationship, especially when partners spend weeks apart, is complete and utter trust in one another. With trust established, other aspects of the relationship tend to fall into place naturally.
8 Questions Answered
Watching her parents live a very ordinary life as police officers petrified Molly-Mae, driving her from around age 15 to want to do something different and make the most of the 24 hours in a day.
She is extremely strict, taking on less than 1% of incoming work requests, ensuring she only promotes products or brands she 100% believes in and uses, which is key to maintaining audience trust.
She turned it down because she didn't believe in the brand or wear their clothes, prioritizing building trust with her audience over short-term financial gain, believing that trust would lead to more money in the future.
She acknowledges it's a challenge she's working on, but finds happiness by focusing on her mental state, family, and non-superficial aspects of life, while also recognizing that her current success is what her younger self dreamed of.
She has learned to accept that it's impossible to please everyone and views trolls as genuinely unhappy people trying to bring others down. She now has a team to monitor for paparazzi and avoids looking at negative comment sections.
She realized she no longer looked like herself, influenced by her sister's concern and public comments. After removing them, she felt the prettiest she ever had, dropped years off her age, and unexpectedly became a positive role model for young girls.
She combats it by being extremely honest and transparent, asking questions when she doesn't understand, and reminding herself that she is still young and learning, rather than pretending to know everything.
Their relationship is built on complete and utter trust, which Molly-Mae believes is the most important factor for its survival. This trust allows them to be secure even when Tommy is away for weeks on end.
14 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Authenticity Over Money
Decline lucrative opportunities that don’t align with your beliefs or product usage, as building audience trust through authenticity will generate more long-term value and income.
2. Be Highly Selective With Opportunities
Filter incoming work and opportunities extremely strictly, taking on only a tiny percentage that aligns with your values and goals to maintain authenticity and audience trust.
3. Share Realities for Audience Connection
Be transparent on social media, sharing not just aspirational content but also your struggles and low moments, as this honesty fosters deeper audience connection and relatability.
4. Embrace Continuous Learning by Asking
Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you don’t understand something, especially in intimidating professional settings, as this humility is key to rapid learning and growth.
5. Build a Deeply Aligned Support Team
Surround yourself with a manager and team who deeply understand your vision and direction, as their support is crucial for navigating challenges and achieving success.
6. Continuously Set and Update Goals
Regularly (e.g., every few months) meet with your team or yourself to set new goals and targets, rapidly updating them as you achieve previous ones to maintain momentum and ambition.
7. Invest in Personal Safety and Privacy
Be extremely cautious about sharing personal location details, even with close contacts, and prioritize investing in security measures to protect your safety and peace of mind.
8. Maintain a Small, Trusted Circle
Cultivate a minuscule social circle of trusted individuals, as this allows you to focus your time and energy on relationships and activities that truly elevate you and your career.
9. Cultivate Trust in Relationships
Prioritize complete and utter trust as the most important foundation in any relationship, as it allows for peace of mind and makes other aspects of the relationship fall into place.
10. Pace Yourself for Future Enjoyment
Avoid rushing to achieve all your biggest goals too quickly; instead, pace yourself to ensure you always have exciting things to look forward to in the future and can appreciate the journey.
11. Ground Yourself with Gratitude
Despite ambitions and worries, regularly step back to acknowledge and appreciate your health, family, relationships, and current achievements to maintain a grounded and happy perspective.
12. Caution with Impressionable Audiences
Be extremely careful and thoughtful about what you post or say, especially regarding sensitive topics like body image or health, as young and vulnerable audiences are highly impressionable.
13. Consider Reversing Cosmetic Procedures
If you’ve overdone cosmetic enhancements like filler, consider dissolving them and stripping back to a more natural look, as this can lead to feeling prettier and more confident.
14. Embrace an Extreme Mindset for Life
Recognize that you are given only one life and should strive to go to the extremes to make the most of it and achieve your full potential.
8 Key Quotes
We literally only are given one life, we have to just go to the extremes.
Molly-Mae
I've worked my absolute arse off to get where I am now. A lot of people don't believe that, but I work, I spend time with my boyfriend and I go to bed. That is literally my life.
Molly-Mae
No amount of money can make me take a job that I don't believe in. If I'm not wearing the clothes, I'm not taking the job. No matter if they offered me five million, 10 million.
Molly-Mae
Your happiness comes from within and the people around you and your life. It doesn't come from how much money you have in your bank and what car you drive and what house you live in.
Molly-Mae
I'm not that girl from Hitchin anymore. And you know, like I'm not that young girl that was a lifeguard at Hitchin swimming pool. Like that's not me. I've, I'm living a completely different, in a different world now.
Molly-Mae
You have to be honest and you have to include those things that maybe you don't really want to include it, but your audience will appreciate that because that girl is probably also having a crappy day that's watching it.
Molly-Mae
I'd rather spend money on security than spend it on a handbag. Like, because what makes you feel better now? The security, of course, because I can go down the street and know I'm safe.
Molly-Mae
I am enough, me, I am enough, but the work I've done isn't enough yet. I've got so much more to do.
Molly-Mae