From Breakouts to Breakthroughs: Waepril’s Rise to a 180K-Strong Skincare Community | Ep 207
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have Waypro, aka April, a Canadian-based beauty influencer with over 180,000 followers on IG and focused mostly on something that is near and dear to my heart, but skincare and makeup.

Now, wait, bro, I got to say, I don't tell anyone this, but I've been wearing makeup for many years. I don't call it makeup. I call it tinted sunscreen, but I guess it's technically, you know, makeup theoretically. So I'm excited to talk to this, but I want to understand from your perspective as to why do you get into this? You know, why are you so passionate about it? And then how do you see being able to turn this into something

a business, you know, going from the social media side to the business side? To answer your first question, the real reason or the whole reason as to how I get into this whole beauty industry is when I was like in my fifth, like when I was in my teenager years, I actually had a lot of acne. And

It's something that made me less confident as a person. I always stare at myself in the mirror and say, oh my gosh, I have a new acne again. It's almost like every single day I'll get a new acne. And at that time, I'm not very good at putting makeup, but I bought some makeup, tried my best to cover it up. But in the end of the day, it just...

I'm not quite there. I wasn't a confident person. And so because of that, because of my skin being bad during my teenage years,

I start to learn the ingredients of different skincare products. You know, when they say acne-prone skin, within the acne-prone skin, like, you see, you know, thousands of products in the market. But then which one is for you? So I tried a lot of different products. And some of them made my skin even worse. Like, I noticed that I even have more acne afterwards. So I'm like, okay, that didn't work. So I ended up trying out...

a lot of different products. And eventually I realized it's actually the ingredients that matters. Like the ingredients are the ones that really does something to your skin. And you need to find the right ingredient that will work well for your skin. So that's kind of how I started this whole beauty industry idea. And which is why if you look at, you know, some of my Instagram posts,

When I talk a lot, when I talk about the products, I talk a lot about the ingredients itself because those are the active ingredients are the ones that actually make your skin like either better or worse. So it's kind of like, it's very important. And I hope,

you know, whoever, for the individuals who's like passionate about the beauty industry, you know, looking at the ingredients is actually very important. Well, I'm glad you bring that up. It can be very daunting for people, right? Like you said, I have acne, I have some acne scars still. You want to get rid of this. You see every advertisement, you know, before it'd be like TV advertisements, right? And then you try it and it doesn't work, makes it worse. And then you're more concerned

You're less confident. You're more thinking about the acne. It almost makes you stress. It's really very daunting. So it's great to have someone like yourself who's actually trying it. It's like an unbiased perspective. Is that what you're seeing now from a lot of content creators is the ability for us to watch them try it?

Yes, there are definitely a lot of beauty influencers who do that. Some of them like really has, you know, they used to have very bad skin and they show it from the video. Like, look, I use, you know, product A for two to three weeks and now my skin has cleared up and my acne is gone. But acne prone skin can be very tricky because acne

Let's say you have acne, I have acne, but different ingredients will work for you. Different ingredients will work for me. So it's kind of like it's a bit tricky. It's good to follow. Like, it's good to watch followers. But in the end of the day, every skin, every individual has a different skin, even though, you know, both of us have acne prone skin. Like it could it still could be different.

So in the end of the day, it's important to try out the product on your own. Yeah. So now you, you know, you built a community. You built what sounds like amazing people who really look up to you. They watch what you're doing. They take the advice. What's the next phase for content creators? Once they start building this up, then what do they do next? Like, how do they really monetize? How do they turn it into a business? I think.

After growing a specific number of followers, the next step would be collaborations. So right now, I will get like sometimes emails from like, you know, brands that I love saying that, hey, we're launching in Canada. Like you are one of the few beauty influencers that we want to ship our product to, you know, so you can like tell your audience about us launching.

And the other one is paid collaborations. Smaller brands who are trying to get their name out there would love to work with bigger beauty influencers just to help get their brand, their products out there in the market space. No, that's amazing. If someone came to you and said, look, I have 10 followers. I want to grow. I want to build a community. I'm passionate about X, Y, Z.

Is there anything that you can, any tips or strategies that you can give them that worked for you in terms of being able to grow and create the community? Yes, for sure. So I think for me, when I started,

It was hard because you post, you probably just get three views, five views, or even zero views. You know, just because you're starting, you only have five followers. But the most important thing is if you're passionate on something, you'll keep going. Like, don't just give up and say, oh, I only have five followers this month. I should just move on with my life.

I think for me, the passion is really what got me here in this position. Because if I look back as to how I started, I could have easily told myself, you know what, this is not going to work out. I'm just going to give up and then do something else.

But no, I didn't. Like I told myself, you know what? I love what I'm doing. I'm going to keep going. I'm just going to keep posting and then look at, you know, trending reels, you know, kind of see what's going on in the market, like what's going on in the Instagram space, for example. Um,

It's like, oh, this kind of idea is trending. Maybe create something similar. But to me, I like originality. I would look at an idea, but eventually I'll make it into my own.

Because to me, what's important is I want people to look at a specific reel and say, oh, it's Weipo who created that reel. Not, oh, it's just the top trending reel. I mean, it's good to be the top trending reel, but I always want people to say, oh, it's Weipo's reel. It's different. It almost has my personality, my passion, my love into that reel. I really like the individuality. I think it's really easy to just copy trending stuff.

trending music, songs, dances, whatever it is, just do exactly what everyone else. But then what, you know, what separates you at that point, right? If you're just following along everyone else. So that's a great, and then I could, I could see from somebody's perspective that if only two people watch it, they get very discouraged and they stop. So what for you made you keep going? You know what? Because as we know, like you said, most people are doing this

for free in the sense of no one's paying them to post on social media in the beginning.

And then if you factor in their cost of their time, they're technically negative, right? In the beginning as they're building up. So what for you encourage you to keep going? I think for me, so when I started back in 2020, you know, it was COVID. I'm bored. I have a lot of time in my hands. So I started doing it for fun at first. But closer to like 2021, and this was the time when my dad was not feeling well and also the year when he passed away. I remember...

It was a little bit touching because he, like I was talking to him before he passed away and I was telling him about, you know, I like doing what I'm doing. But he always tells me like, he's good. Like I always look up to my dad and he would always say like, do whatever you want, right? Like it's very important to get your passion out there.

Because a lot of people out there, when they know like, oh, I'm not earning enough money. I'm just going to do something else in life. But he always tells me, if this is something that you love,

keep going. Like, don't just give up, right? Don't let five different people who said, oh, you're real is like really bad. Like, don't let five bad comments, like, discourage you. Like, always keep going. In the end of the day, it's your Instagram. It's your life. This is how you want to live your life. And this is kind of how I kept going. Like, I always remember that conversation that I had with my dad before he passed away. So...

Thank you for sharing. I mean, being so vulnerable is not always easy, right? And so, of course, you know, my condolences to what happened. I can imagine that that's very hard. Did you feel then in order to continue on, was social media a big part of that? Yes. So after my dad passed away, I actually stuck for a bit. Like, I think I gave myself a couple of months. Like, I just like...

It's hard when you're so sad. It's hard to be joyful because when you create Instagram Reel, you want to ooze out. At least I want to ooze out positive energy. It's like, hey, I'm using this product and I love it. And I want to ooze positive energy. But after my dad passed away, it was very, very hard for me. So I kind of just...

I told myself, you know what, I'm going to give myself a couple months break and I will come back with a better mindset and just really focus. I feel like before my dad passed away, I was really doing Instagram for fun. Like just, hey, I get freebies. This is product A, product B. But after my dad passed away and after that conversation with my dad, that's the time when

my mindset is very like clear of like, I really want to get into this and I want to be successful or at least I'm going to try my best to be successful. It sounds like it really gave you the motivation. Yeah. You know, the, you know, it's, it's like sometimes the challenges in our life, um, give us the most life lessons and motivation sometimes to move to something, something different. Um,

I'm curious, something I see a lot of people doing when it comes to makeup, and I find this very fascinating, is they'll talk about maybe something serious. So they'll talk about vacation trips and they're putting on makeup. What is this trend in terms of like you're doing like makeup or skincare, but you're talking about something completely different? This seems to be something it's continuing to catch on.

Like you mean like talking about makeup, but at the same time traveling? Is that kind of... So they'll be like putting makeup on or they'll be like doing some sort of skincare, but they're talking about something totally unrelated, like has nothing to do with skincare.

But it's like the act of putting makeup on, like they're filming themselves putting makeup on and talking about a vacation they went on. I was just watching this video about a woman talking about her vacation. But I see like, but she's always doing videos of putting makeup on her skincare. But she's not talking about that. She's talking about something else. And I'm wondering about, is this like,

a way to grab attention. I'm trying to figure out like what was the psychology around why I'm seeing people doing this, but they're not talking about the skincare. They're talking about something else. I think it's more like perspective and originality. Because if you're going into the social media space,

it almost feels like it's very saturated. As you know, as we know, it's a very, very saturated space. If you're just going in and like, hey, this is product A, this is product B, it's like, well...

500 influencers have done that already. So it's almost like, hey, even me as an individual, I go like, hmm, what would be something cool that people haven't done before? And then you just go with it. And sometimes if I see like, oh, it's the top trending thing to do, I was like, maybe I should give it a try. So that's what I would do. I would just like,

I think that is the idea behind it is like trying to be original and not be lumped together as like, you know, oh, you're just one of the 500 influencers that has done ABCDE. You know, at least that one's different and they think it's fun. Plus, it gives them a little bit of a personality to it. Yeah.

That makes total. Yeah. I mean, like you said, there's billions of people on social media. It's really hard to stand out many times. Um, and it takes a lot of effort and energy. Um,

I know YouTube is obviously TikTok has TikTok shop and they've been crushing it. I've seen people do like a million dollars in a day selling on TikTok. Insane numbers, right? Which I know like in China and certain parts of Asia, that's kind of the norm. But it's more coming to the US, North America, Canada. I know YouTube just launched YouTube shop.

or YouTube commerce, I forget what they're, what they're calling it. How do you see the future of, you know, from your perspective as a content creator, being able to obviously sell live. And then if you have a brand, you know, using that brand with other creators to also sell live, how do you see this whole social commerce thing playing out?

I think there's definitely a huge potential to make it as a business. Because if you look at Amazon right now, they have an Amazon shop. And definitely, I think after COVID, during 2020, 2021, I start seeing Amazon shop growing their beauty products more.

And I think that's the idea behind it is because for us beauty influencers, like especially when you're starting off and you want to start earning, you know, commissions here and there, Amazon is actually a good place to kind of start. Have like a little bit of a website and then attach it and then put your commission links. And that is good for people who are starting, people who can't afford to, you know, have their own customized website yet at that time.

So there's definitely a huge potential there when it comes to business and earning money. You know, funny enough, not many people know this. Only really you, April, and maybe two others. Back in 2015, I was doing skincare videos for Amazon Live and it was only me and Korean women. That's it.

Me and Korean women. But the crazy thing, though, is nobody ever bought. It was very, very hard to convince people in the U.S. at that time. A lot like thousands of people would watch these videos that I would put, but nobody ever would buy. And I was like, forget this. I should have followed your I should have followed what you said, because who knows? I could have a substantial amount of following, but I just quit after a few months. I got rid of it. But I am really inspired, though, by the fact

that, you know, like you keep going, you continue building. You had, you know, some, you had a really dark moment that you turned around and used, you know, to continue going. I think people, I can tell you're very,

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For you and the planet. You are yourself. And I think people can see the authenticity in what you do, which is why you're continuing to build this community. So I know you have a new website out. Can you tell everyone where to go? And then also, of course, if people want to watch your videos, they want to follow you, they want to contact you. How can they do so? Yeah, for sure. So I just launched a new website. It's called glambyapril.com.

So in that website, like you get to see like all the stuff that I've been working on. I have a couple of YouTube videos. I just started YouTube though. So my main social media platform at the moment is Instagram.

So you can either type in my real name, which is W-A-E-P-R-I-L, which is April. You can easily search my name. Or my Instagram handle is April underscore April underscore beauty. What are some of your favorite products that you're using right now? So I have a lot of skincare products that I really love at the moment. So...

I don't know about you, Daniel, but I do the double cleansing method. So double cleansing method, I don't want to go too much on it. But basically, the idea is you want to cleanse your face twice. And the whole idea is because you want to first use an oil-based cleanser to remove makeup. And the second one is a water-based cleanser to just further make sure that your face is clean. So the reason why I like the double cleansing method is because...

I find with makeup, makeup products typically contain both oil and water-based ingredients.

So when you just use a water-based ingredient as a cleanser, like, sorry, water-based cleanser, sometimes you still leave some gunk on your face. Like, it doesn't come off. So this is why I like the double cleansing method. I feel like it's the best to make sure that your skin is really clean. So my two favorite products for the double cleansing method is the one from Pharmacy Beauty. It's called the Double Cleansing Balm. Oil-based cleanser, but unscented, perfect.

perfect for sensitive skin. So that will work on almost everybody. I have been using this product for a couple of years now and it has worked wonders. I cannot stop using the product. If I stop, my skin is almost going to scream like, what did you do differently? What did you do differently? You got to go back. So that was the first product. The water-based cleanser that I love at the moment is the one from IT Cosmetics.

It's called Confidence In This Cleanser. It's a water-based serum cleanser. Super nourishing, super hydrating, and at the same time, it cleanses my face very effectively. So those are like my favorite cleanser products.

My favorite moisturizer is the one from Kiehl's. It's called the Ultra Facial Cream. Very, very popular product. And I like the fact that it's unscented. And it's that moisturizer that I can use, you know, all four seasons and my skin feels moisturized.

Because as you may know, when it comes to like wintertime, typically you'd need a thicker cream. And then when it comes to summertime, when our skin tends to be oily and greasy, we want something more water-based. But I find with the Kiehl's Ultra Facial Cream, like you get to use it.

all year long and my skin feels hydrated. It's just, it feels amazing. So that's why I keep talking about it because I'm like, I wish people would give it a try. If you, Daniel, or any of the viewers who's watching this video haven't tried that product, I would suggest you to do so because I love it so much. But yeah, and the other favorite beauty product that I

tried, which I'm highly recommending to a lot of ladies out there, is the YSL Lash Class Mascara. So that mascara recently launched, I would say a month ago. So it's a recently new product. But what I find is that the applicator one is amazing in like making your eyelashes look really volumized. It's one of the few that can do that.

A lot of the things, like, in the drugstore, it doesn't do it as well. But that one, just, like, oh, my God, like, wow, I can see my lashes now. Because I don't have a lot of lashes, so I can really see a big, like, noticeable difference. So.

Yeah, there we go. Well, there we go. We got the whole lesson. So we got to check out those four products. Yeah. Um, April, this has been a lot of fun. Uh, thank you again for being vulnerable today for sharing your story and sharing some tips and strategies that we can all take away. Uh, and I hope everyone checks out your website and then your, your social accounts as well. And, uh, thank you for joining us today on founder story. All right. Sounds good. Yeah. Thank you, Daniel.

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