Winning the Best Dressed Lady award at the Galway Races in 2016 turned out to be the springboard to launch a beauty and fashion brand for Lisa McGowan. Now with a turnover of around €10m, the social-savvy entrepreneur behind Lisa’s Lust List talks to Kate Demolder about growing the business and navigating the pros and cons of having a high-profile online presence

Many stories begin at the Galway Races, but perhaps none so lucrative as Lisa’s Lust List.

The hugely popular online blog that allowed 52-year-old founder Lisa McGowan to receive total remuneration of over €1m (€949,575 in pay and €342,001 in pension contributions, according to accounts filed) last year.

Her journey to media — from working in insurance at the family firm — began in 2016, when she took home the coveted Best Dressed Lady award at Ladies Day at the Galway Races.

From there, boutiques began to contact McGowan, offering her garments to wear for exposure on her social media profiles.

“Immediately, after I’d worn something, I noticed it would sell out,” she says on a bitterly cold morning, the deep brown locks for which she is known tied in a bun on the top of her head.

“I knew this because I had my own website and could see the traction.”

She started her blog the following year, sharing fashion picks and collaborating online with brands.

The move proved successful thanks to her profoundly devoted audience of 379,000 followers — comments under each social media post range from “you make products for us real ladies” to “are these available to pre-order?”

McGowan recognised the business potential, something for which she credits with long-time friend and collaborator, consultant Linda Blanchfield.

“She believed in me when I didn’t,” McGowan says. “It got to the point when I was asking myself: ‘If I can do this for other brands, why can’t I do this for myself?’”

McGowan launched Lisa & Co. in 2020, an entirely self-funded enterprise bolstered by her insurance salary and sponsored content.

Her first product was a fragrance.

“Who does that?” she laughs. “You can’t smell it, you can’t see it. People thought I was nuts. But I always loved perfume, and I’d built my trust with my followers so much at that point that it sold out in a couple of hours.”

Today, Lisa & Co. has grown into a line of 48 pieces, spanning fashion, wellness products and cosmetics, with more planned for 2025.

The line’s hero product is the Skin Luxe CC Cream, that once sold 10,000 bottles in a matter of hours.

At present, it is stocked in 12 Dunnes Stores outlets, and pre-orders exceed 22,000.

“We were told that people were actually grabbing it out of baskets — it never even made shelves,” McGowan says.

“People told me that the cosmetics market was way too saturated. But I believe if the product is good, it will sell.”

In 2023, Lisa’s Lust List Limited had accumulated profits of €1.19m after reporting a loss of €27,240 for the financial year.

McGowan values her three businesses — Lisa’s Lust List, Lisa & Co., Lisa & Co. Cosmetics — at a combined €7m.

In terms of turnover, last year Lisa’s Lust List increased by 67% to €2.5m, Lisa & Co. Cosmetics took home €3.3m across ten months, while Lisa & Co. fashion and lifestyle products amassed “close to €5m”, according to the businesswoman.

Her day-to-day work can focus on everything from product design to calls with manufacturers (“I don’t own a laptop, I do everything by speaking into my phone”) to producing sponsored content.

McGowan works with 26 Irish brands monthly — her affiliation links and codes, from Seoulista Skincare to DID Electrical, can be found on her website — but remains focused on harnessing her own brand, both in Ireland and farther afield, for 2025.

“My customers are online, so I regularly sell all around the world; the UK, New Zealand etc,” she says.

“My business is here, and will always have that link, but we’re definitely not limited in that regard.”

That said, the Offaly native’s business ventures have not been without strife. In 2020, McGowan secured High Court orders requiring Facebook to provide her with information to identify anonymous people who were, in her words, trolling, defaming and stalking her online.

“They were saying that I was stealing money from charity events I was running,” she says, visibly angry.

“I will take comments on my body or my appearance anytime, but question my integrity and my business and I’m going to protect them.”

Instagram, owned by Facebook at the time before the company rebranded as Meta, eventually gave McGowan the IP addresses associated with the comments.

“And they vanished overnight,” she says. “I actually got a lot of messages from other influencers online thanking me for standing up to the bullies. I suppose it’s the price you pay for being successful.”

With the rise of brands like Trinny London, POCO Beauty, Jones Road and now Lisa & Co, the over-35s demographic — typically a cohort left out of the conversation — is experiencing a bit of a revolution.

“It’s not something I set out to do originally,” McGowan says. “Until people started messaging me, saying: ‘Thank you so much, I lost myself after having children and you’re helping me come back from that.’

“At that stage my son Darragh was in his 20s, so I’d forgotten what that feeling was like: when you’re spending all of your disposable income on your children, and deprioritising your importance.

“And, you know, there is more disposable income for people in their 40s and 50s than there is with teenagers, so it’s a cohort that shouldn’t be overlooked.”

In recent years, the conversation around job titles regularly comes up when discussing work with influencers.

“I do social media,” is how McGowan responds. “I cringe when people ask me what I do, because for so long I said I’m an insurance broker.

“But now, my husband always tells me to say I’m an entrepreneur. I shouldn’t be embarrassed by that, but I am. It sounds like I’m gloating, so I just say the social media thing, which is usually vague enough to keep them thinking while I change the subject.”

She finished up working with the family firm last year to fully focus on her three businesses.

She employs just her son, Darragh.

“I work indirectly with lots of people — PR, photographers etc — but it’s just me and him really. I worked with my dad for 30 years, so it’s lovely to continue that on.”

McGowan’s story is a success, undoubtedly, because of her fanbase — something she does not take for granted.

Hate arrives here and there, and in 2019 a handwritten letter calling McGowan “mean, a bitch and a liar” was sent to her office.

“I build walls around myself to protect myself, because I still hurt easily,” she says.

But for the most part McGowan says she treats her followers like friends because she knows they will “fight for her”.

“I personally answer every message that comes in,” she says. “No one else has my passwords. I’m potentially overdoing it, because I reply even on weekends or holidays. But they are absolutely the secret to my success. Without my followers, I would be nothing.”

As for advice for women in their 40s or 50s looking to start anew?

“Take that chance,” she says. “Five years ago, I never thought I’d be here. And, to be quite frank, we never know what’s around the corner.

“If you want something badly enough, you should do it. I could go for a drive today and skid on the road and be dead. You have to make the most of what you want to do when you’re here.”