The most influential beauty creator in the world built her career by breaking almost every rule she was told to follow.

Shima Katouzian has 3.5 million followers. That's a fraction of the platform most top beauty creators have. Yet she's the number 1 creator in the world powering conversation around beauty, number 6 by Earned Media Value globally, and number 3 by impressions. The reason is trust.

Shima built that trust through radical honesty. She only promotes what she actually uses. She refuses to soften her opinions for brand partners. She's open with her audience about money, products, and the industry itself.

That honesty has come with a cost. The Iranian regime banned her book. They banned her from returning home. When her father passed six months ago, she couldn't attend his funeral.

In this conversation, Ronit and Shima get into the real cost of honesty, what it takes to survive coordinated cancel campaigns, and how to stay yourself when the world wants you to be someone else.

Follow Shima at @herosheemaz. Subscribe to The Creator Class for more conversations with the creators shaping the industry.

Chapters

00:00 — "You are the number one creator in the world powering conversation around beauty"

02:35 — Meeting Shima at a brand conference

03:39 — The moment on the panel that stopped Ronit cold

04:39 — The stat that makes Shima different from every other beauty creator

06:06 — What Creator IQ's data says about her influence

07:11 — Leaving Iran in 2017 with no plan

09:30 — Landing a job at Tesla without knowing what Tesla was

10:39 — Posting through the pandemic while everyone else stayed home

12:18 — "It felt like FaceTiming my friend"

12:27 — Could she have done this if she'd stayed in Iran?

14:09 — How cancel campaigns work at her scale

15:29 — The coordinated attack that nearly destroyed her business

17:57 — The two-week rule a podcast taught her

19:30 — The morning ritual that got her through

20:46 — Why the campaign ended in 200,000 new followers

21:21 — Why it took three years to quit Tesla

22:24 — The "fuck it" moment

23:12 — Discovering affiliate links by accident

25:02 — The $6,000 she didn't know she'd made

26:02 — Why her conversion rate is unlike anyone else's

27:28 — Launching her beauty line three years ago

29:05 — The gap she saw in beauty

30:23 — Building her products with her followers

30:41 — The Immigrant Girl eyeshadow palette

32:15 — Sitting with Selena Gomez and Jennifer Aniston

36:17 — Why she'll never become a lifestyle creator

38:04 — The bubble she built with her audience

38:27 — "They can relate to me because I never changed"

40:38 — The book she wrote 15 years ago

42:03 — Becoming the best-selling book at the Tehran book fair

43:00 — The moment she realized her audience was real

45:05 — "I care about your hard earned money"

46:25 — Losing her father, banned from going home

47:00 — "I'm the biggest threat to the Iranian regime"

47:30 — "We are a real person in a digital world"

50:00 — The cost of honesty

51:23 — Why influence invites envy

52:34 — Where to follow Shima