Self-Taught Kelli Anne Sewell Turned Her Passion for Makeup Into a Beauty Empire

From tech sales to touch-ups, the Makeup By Kelli Anne founder bet on herself and now calls Kelsea Ballerini, Camille Kostek and more clients.

Makeup by Kelli Anne

Makeup By Kelli Anne founder Kelli Anne Sewell spent most of her life dancing, and while preparing for competitions, she became the resident makeup artist for her friends. She would find herself spending hours in Sephora and browsing the counters at Nordstrom aimlessly. Though she went to University of Texas and got a job at Oracle in tech sales after college, Sewell continually felt a pull toward glam and missed the creative process.

With no formal training, she would spend her off hours teaching herself by watching YouTube videos and would do makeup on the side as a hobby. During Covid, when everyone was isolated and staying home, she kept at it – even with nowhere to go. “It was such a stressful time that I really leaned into it as a way to come back to something that made me feel confident and calm,” Sewell tells SI Swimsuit. “I think because we were working at home it gave me the freedom to play around with makeup more.”

From there, she decided to take her tutorials to the gram and would do Instagram Lives on Wednesday evenings with some wine. It was a really “transformative year” in her life, which she still can’t believe. Her first one had seven followers, but not too long after, she says that it “really developed and turned into this beautiful momentum.”

Kelli Anne Sewell teaches master classes around the country / Leon Bennett/Getty Images for Beautycon

She started going live on Instagram every week, would reach out to influencers in Austin, Nashville, L.A. or New York City asking if they wanted free glam on weekends and made it all work with her fulltime job. Sewell then created a Zoom class and couldn’t believe that 1200 people had signed up! The time finally came when she leaned in fully to pursue her passion as a makeup artist and content creator.

Now, she has “literal dream clients” and has worked with some of our favorites: Camille Kostek, Alix Earle, Brooks Nader, Olivia Culpo and country superstar Kelsea Ballerini to name a few. Sewell will also be joining the SI Swimsuit Social Club to teach a master class in NYC.

Keep reading for her best career advice from one of her mentors, Kendra Scott, and how she knew it was time to commit to this career path fully.

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How did you juggle your fulltime job with doing makeup as a side hustle?

“Looking back, I think it was just sacrifice. I mean, it's a stupid answer, but it's so true. I was at an age and a time where I could. I was going out on the weekends till 2:00 AM, waking up at 6:00 A.M. and doing makeup all day on a Saturday. I was tired, but it wasn't as detrimental as it could be. I am 30 now, and I feel like I need my eight hours of sleep. I was just hustling and so obsessed with it that it didn't feel like work.”

When did you realize it was time to leave Oracle?

“I did feel a natural shift. There was a time I found myself getting invited on brand trips or getting opportunities to glam people when I had this fulltime job, and I remember feeling like I'm missing more opportunities now because I have my job whereas it used to feel the opposite. That was kind of my push to take the leap of faith, do it and move [to NYC]. And that was in 2021.”

What do you love about this new career?

“I love glamming clients; I love the relationships; I love being a content creator, and I love owning a business. Every day is different. Don’t get me wrong, the hours you put in, of course it feels like work, but I still have that fire under my ass where it's so fun to do. I'm really big about manifesting, and I've always kept this journal in my little black book, and pretty much 90% of the clients and the faces that I'm doing now, I wrote their names down five years ago, as dream people to ever know my name.”

In the beginning, how did you put yourself out there?

“I would hit up every single influencer, just influential people that I could get in front of and be like, I would love to do your makeup [for free]. I would go to New York, L.A., Nashville, and I would stack my calendar all day, every day. And the whole time, I was just telling a very honest story on social media. I think the people following me loved this underdog story of someone who's just chasing this dream. When I worked with some of the large influencers, I would never ask for them to tag or anything. I always just wanted them to love their makeup and feel so good that they could do whatever they wanted with it. They ended up tagging, and I think that really helped kind of grow this momentum. And at the same time, it’s kind of how my app now was conceptualized.”

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Tell us a bit more about how you got Makeup By Kelli Anne started?

“I ended up bringing on an assistant, who is now my COO of my business, but also my app business. She helped me buy the bigger Zoom license, and we had this Zoom class for a thousand people basically. For the next two years, we sold [videos] on just a website, and I ended up launching a few other courses. In total we sold 11,000 copies. And that's why I was just like, there's something here. I would love to build something that I completely control and own. It's my business, it's not reliant on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube.”

You talk about how makeup should be fun, so running your own business, are there times that you even need to remind yourself of this?

“For sure. I think everyone, no matter what job you're doing, there's everyday stressors that feel really important at the time. There's things that frustrate you, and whatever, but at the end of the day, we say this with our team, obviously we're not curing cancer, we are building something that is fun for all of us. It's a team effort; we feel so empowered when we do it, and I try to lead with that. I just love that we are a woman run team, and we've built this business.”

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How do you keep it fresh? What inspires you to create these different videos?

“We've definitely grown in the past year. The first year, you launch, it's a lot of hype and novelty. Then year two we need these people to stick around. We've been so happy because every single month we are growing month over month, year over year. I'll never stop being a makeup artist because I think it gives me a lot of incredible inspiration. I love working with people, understanding their vibes and exploring a little bit with their features. And then also just the basis of why we built this business in the first place is listening to customer feedback or listening to my community. I think every single video that we've ever conceptualized is based off DMs. We've said this from the beginning, it's videos created by our community to serve our community.”

Who has given you some great advice?

“One of my clients is Kendra Scott, and that was full circle, because it was my first retail job out of college. She is obviously one of the most successful women in the United States, and she's given me really good advice about how to remain authentic and how to have really big goals. She's always said, ‘You need to have billion-dollar goals, and just think of yourself in those ways.’ Until you start to legitimize yourself and think, I can achieve that, I can get there, you're just cutting yourself short.”

Who are some of your idols in the makeup industry?

“Makeup by Mario is someone that I really look up to. He's remained super humble; he is such a successful brand, and he's just a true artist. I love hearing him talk about the way he creates products, and he's very education-forward. The whole thing about my app too, and what I try to do on social media is educate. I think a lot of us are consuming all these products, but we don't know how to use them. Another artist that I really look up to is Katie Jane Hughes because she has this kind of beautiful split that I am aspiring to have as well. She is a celebrity makeup artist who works with A-list celebrities and has her own beauty brand. I love being a very multifaceted person. I want my brand to always represent that you can do a lot of different things. You can be a business owner; you can be an artist; you can be an influencer, but you also can talk about wellness and cellulite and own who you are as a person.”

What do you foresee being next for you? Your own makeup line...

“I definitely see myself continuing down the education path. We're doing three master classes this year. We did four cities last year, and they were sold out. We're about to be in Phoenix. I want to work with some dream brands and maybe a makeup line down the road, but not in the near future. I really want to build out Makeup By Kelli Anne and make it the best experience for our customer. And this has been a dream of mine to work with Sports Illustrated, so when this whole thing came about, I was like this is something I have manifested in my journal for years. I can't even believe I get to teach a master class.”

To see Kelli Anne in a city near you, visit here.