Korean Skincare Expert Sarah Lee on How She Created a Cult Beauty Brand

Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful women who've made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode will give you a direct line to women who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on iTunes, and stay tuned. We'll be releasing new episodes on Mondays.

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(Image credit: Second Life)

Korean skincare expert and Glow Recipe co-founder Sarah Lee spent years in the corporate beauty world at L'Oreal Paris before making the leap to start her own company, which has created cult products that have sold out numerous times on Sephora. Glow Recipe's first popular product, the Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask, had a "waiting list of 5000 people within a few hours after launch," Lee tells Second Life host Hillary Kerr. How impressive is that? 

"There was a sense of desire that everybody wanted on Instagram," Lee says. "And I think that we organically built micro-influencers with our customers because the first ones that tried our formula really were excited to share their experience on their Instagram, whether they had 200 followers or 500,000 followers. And that just became a viral community of sharing the results and the first reviews. I think that really trickled to a wider audience." Learn about her fascinating career journey on the newest episode of Second Life on iTunes, and scroll down to shop her brand. 

Shop Glow Recipe

Next, I used to live and die by Sephora reviews until I found these 11 products.

Erin Fitzpatrick
Senior News Editor

Erin got her start as a Who What Wear intern over 12 years ago—back when the site only published a single story per day. (Who What Wear has since increased that number twentyfold.) She graduated magna cum laude from USC, which is how she ended up moving to Los Angeles from her hometown of San Diego. In college, she also interned at Refinery29, where she was promoted to editorial assistant and then assistant editor. After nearly three years at R29, she came back to WWW in 2016, where she currently holds the title of senior news editor (as well as the unofficial title of resident royal expert—in case you haven't noticed her numerous Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton stories). She spends her days trying to incorporate her idols, Anna Wintour and Roger Federer, into as many stories as possible. Outside of work, she loves tennis, classic rock, traveling, and smothering her dog with affection.