Couple of weeks ago, Michelle Phan aka ricebunny came to Australia. Needless to say when I was offered the opportunity to interview her when she came to Melbourne, I jumped at the opportunity only because any beauty blogger/vlogger would already know who she is and aspire to be her to a certain extend. Thanks to Lancome who brought Michelle in for an appearance I got the opportunity to pick her brain on all things beauty and blogger related.

I won’t dwell on the partnership between Michelle and Lancome because this is already old news and she’s mentioned it many times in her past videos and blog posts. Let’s get on with the interview shall we?

What are your top 3 skincare and makeup products from Lancome? 

Skincare: Genifique Youth Activating Concentrate, Visionnaire Advance Skin Corrector & Bi Facil Eye Make up Remover.

Make up: Rouge in loved #340B Rose Boudoir, Hypnose Doll Lashes Mascara & Artliner Precision Point Eye liner.

With Lancome’s partnership, what is your key message to women out there?

I think the key message is to be not afraid and experiment with your beauty. Beauty is something we are all born with and sometime people don’t see it. You know growing up being insecure and we all find flaws in ourselves. We’re always beautiful since the day we are born; make up is an incredible tool  and its free to discover and allow us to self discover, finding who we are as a person and identifying beauty.

What inspires you to help produce Lancome make up products and videos?

Lancome approached me to produce videos for them and to establish this partnership. I really believe in Lancome, it’s a brand that’s been around. My mom uses Lancome, it’s been around for 77 years and they have an incredible reputation and is one of the biggest beauty brand from around the world.

To me it is such an honour to work with such a prestigious brand, they work with people like Julia Roberts, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Isabella Rossellini & Emma Watson. I am really grateful that I get to do the videos that I enjoy and I am able to soft produce, Lancome don’t dictate what I produce and they give me 100% freedom to create videos.

In Australia, women believe in natural beauty. For everyday women, what make up products do you recommend for them to wear more makeup? 

I recommend women to first identify what colour they like, so if you like yellow, pinks or blues; once they’ve established the colour that they really like and look within the colour family to find colours that they could wear – something that can be added into their colour collection. Really, it’s added accent colours to your face to subtly added colours to your make up look.

Women often feel intimidated (by the vast amount of products and pushy SA) when they are at the make up counter, do you have any tips or tricks to encourage women to come and play at the make up/skincare counters?

It’s no different then going into a car lot buying a car, do your research online. Write down a laundry list of products you want to try out and look at online reviews, make mental notes and bring the list to the counter. Once you head to the counter with your list, they know that you’re there for the list and won’t be pushy on everything. To me, beauty counters is almost like a show room. You can go in to try and test drive it out and if you really like it ask for samples.

We have all witness your success story from blogging and vlogging. What do you think is the single factor that helped contribute to the success today?

For me, I’m all for consistency. I am always consistent when it comes to uploading videos, quality, people know what to expect and sometimes people also know to expect the unexpected. Having consistency and clarity in my videos really helped.

My fans have told me that they like listening to my voice, it’s soothing, it’s friendly, I’m talking to my viewers like a friend, a big sister not talking down to them in a threatening way. Also, my videos are so easy to watch, anyone can watch them and I do this for a reason. I love teaching so much and I want to simplify anything that seems complicated.

Who inspires you to do what you do? 

Steve Job, for sure.

What is your little dirty habit when it comes to make up? Everyone has one!

I don’t wash my make up brushes often enough.

For bloggers out there, what message do you have for aspiring vloggers/bloggers wanting to be recognized.

Be sure to collaborate with other bloggers/vloggers. To establishes themselves within the community, instead of starting a beauty website and expecting people to read, go onto a beauty forum and promote your site/blog to get people to watch and to read.

MAC or PC? 

Always been Apple.

What camera do you use?

Arri Alexa (the camera they use to shoot Pirates of Carribean), Red Epic (the camera used to film a lot of movies) and I also like the Canon Mark III. It’s all about getting a good lens, investing in a really good lens.

What is your favourite own produced video?  

My recent one. My recent videos are always my favourites because I always want to improve. But I think I have a soft spot for Midnight Kiss because I filmed it on a go without any planning.

What is your favourite video on Youtube?  

I like music videos and I listening to music all the time. It’s so hard for me because I don’t have time to watch videos on Youtube. I like soundtrack, right now I’m loving Dark Knight soundtrack.

Where do you find time to juggle everything?

I recently got an assistant and she schedules out my entire week  and sometimes entire month by the hour. I sleep very little but I do take power naps which helps. For me, I am at the point of my life where my vlogging is a success but what is the next step. I can keep vlogging for the rest of my life but for me I am all about growing and I am all about finding what’s next. I never want to feel comfortable, sit back and enjoy my success.

For me, I want to constantly find the next challenge and do something crazier and bigger. I am so passionate about all these it doesn’t even feel like work and sometimes I feel exhausted exactly like raising a kid. You don’t really know what it’s like but you love the kid to death you just want to shower it with love and attention. Every night when I sleep I feel like I’m fulfilled.

How do you deal with negativity/negative comments on youtube/blog?

We all get them, we even get them in real life in school. The thing with people who write all those nasty comments is actually when Youtube started to roll out the thumbs up system. People now have the power to become popular because they can get alot of thumbs up by writing negative comments. You don’t get thumbs up with positive comments but you get them when you say negative things.

People who like the attention basically just go around and become trolls on videos. They don’t mean it, they say things because they think it’s funny and honestly I don’t think of it as much of a big deal. I ignore them but some of the girls are girls that I know who are trying to push my buttons. Sometimes I’ll lose it and say what I feel like but it can become a struggle. Focus on the positive comments. My best exercise is to write a really long reply to the negative comment and just delete it. Let it out of your system and delete it. It helps 90% of the time for me.

What’s next?

I am working on a few other new projects that are huge and is going to launch next year.

PS: Michelle loves Ponikuta.com’s font. Yay!!

PS 2: Most of the photos credits are to Tine.