Having a niche is vital in the world of influencing. Standing out from the crowd, gaining trust and building your audience is no mean feat in an increasingly saturated market. Lisa McGowan knew that the demographic she was part of was overlooked: no one was speaking to women over 35. Social media was full of crop tops, choreographed dancing and people calling clothes from 2010 “vintage”.
In came a sensible, stylish woman from Tullamore, Co Offaly, who saw an opening and grabbed it. The result was an income of more than €1 million last year.
But when McGowan crashed her car in 2023, she knew something had to give. At the time the 52-year-old influencer was doing two jobs and was highly stressed. The first was in her family’s insurance company — which she and her father, Brendan, founded 30 years ago — and the second, her flourishing Instagram page, which has an impressive 180,000 followers.
“I was working seven days a week and often late evenings in the family business,” McGowan says. “But on top of that I was looking after 26 brands on my Instagram page, as well as my own brand. It was just too much.”
The car crash came as a wake-up call. “I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m not working Saturdays and Sundays any more. I’ve got a son who is home from college. He needs his washing and ironing done!’ I was earning a lot of money but I had no quality of life, so what was the point?” she says.
McGowan became an influencer almost by accident. She grew up the only girl in her family and inherited a love of all things fashion-related from her mother, Monica. “Back in the day, when you used to put deposits in boutiques, my mother had a deposit in every ladies’ clothes shop in the country,” she says, laughing. “She’s more glamorous than me. She’s the most glamorous woman without even trying. She’s just beautiful. I’m fiery in temperament like my mother.”
That fieriness has stood to her. When McGowan won the ladies’ day best dressed prize at Galway Races eight years ago, she was catapulted into the public eye overnight and found herself attacked by trolls online. “It was hard because I didn’t see any of that coming,” she says. “I was on a high, having won ladies’ day, which is so prestigious, and then to have my appearance nit-picked online for three days afterwards, I just wanted to crawl into a hole.
“Then I thought, ‘You can’t actually get away with this,’ so I went on 2FM and spoke about it,” she says. “Whoever did the interview shared my Instagram handle and I suddenly had a huge surge in followers. Then my page started getting shared and it all just snowballed. People kind of sat back and said, ‘Who is this one from Tullamore?’”
Her Instagram page has steadily grown since. Her followers differ from those of other influencers in that they are typically middle-aged women with high disposable income. “I’ve a unique demographic,” she says. “I’ve never thought of it as competing [with other influencers], though, because I’m not with an agency. Why would I pay 20 per cent to an agency when businesses are coming directly to me?”
It’s a prime business opportunity and one McGowan has cashed in on, earning more than €1 million last year, but she’s quick to point out that half of that went to the taxman. Her Instagram page, @lisas_lust_list, has led to not one but three businesses as a result. These include Lisa’s Lust List, which features 26 brands and offers discounts on products. Three years ago McGowan founded Lisa & Co, a fashion and accessories brand. Recently she launched a cosmetics brand, Lisa & Co Cosmetics, which she’s confident will succeed. “I think there’s room for another brand if the price point is good,” she says. “But I suppose time will tell. I’m a firm believer in trying things. Life is just too short not to.”
Jennie McGinn, the director of Sister the Agency, a social advertising agency, is an advocate for authenticity online and is impressed at what McGowan has achieved. “Brands strive for the very thing that Lisa has managed to create at scale — true authenticity. Lisa fluidly moves between different roles — agony aunt, mentor, motivational coach and personal stylist — for her followers. Where many brands struggle with a manufactured authenticity, Lisa expertly threads unfiltered honesty with strategic soft-selling through her humour and wit. Her brand speaks directly to an audience previously marginalised online — she celebrates these women and in doing so has created a highly valuable market from a once-perceived niche.”
McGowan only gave up her insurance job last year because she didn’t want to let her family down. “I didn’t want to have that conversation with my father and mother,” she says. “My parents have always been there for me. And I didn’t want to let them down. My father could see the writing on the wall, especially when my own brand took off, but it was my mother I really had to convince. She said, ‘What are people going to say?’”
McGowan is much happier since she gave it up, however. “I’m not in insurance now,” she says. “I have a diary that I stick to. I limit my brands to two jobs every single day. Then I’ve got my own brand that I’m developing. I take my two-week holidays and I don’t do jobs during that time, which I used to before.”
While she can look very glamorous at times, McGowan can’t afford the time to dress up and do her make-up every day, and she believes that part of her appeal is that she doesn’t. “If you follow me on Instagram you’ll see me on a regular basis with no make-up, with my hair in a ponytail, and just back from the gym. Sometimes I’m crying, sometimes I’m stressed. People tell me that they feel uplifted when they’ve left my page and that I’m very real.”
Everything McGowan touches seems to turn to gold, but how does she do it and what is it that marks her out in the cut-throat world of influencing? Oonagh O’Hagan, the owner and managing director of the pharmacy group Meaghers Pharmacy, has worked with McGowan for seven years and says that her honesty is key.
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“She keeps it real, and no subject is taboo,” O’Hagan says. “What’s more, she tells the truth. If she doesn’t like a product she will say so and decline to feature it. As a result other women trust her completely.”
She also hasn’t let fame go to her head. “When you have that size of a following people think you have pretensions, but Lisa doesn’t,” O’Hagan adds. “She responds to every DM she gets. She never forgets where she came from. She’s also very hard-working. I don’t think she sleeps!”
McGowan readily admits that her life is far from perfect, and recalls the time when her first marriage ended 23 years ago, leaving her a single mother to a one-year-old son, Darragh. “It was hard at the time. I thought it hadn’t happened to anyone else,” she says. “But I went through the emotions and after a few years I got over it. It’s a long time ago now and we’ve all moved on.”
Darragh is now 22 and at college. He wants nothing to do with his mother’s Instagram page. “I don’t mention him on it. I have to respect him,” McGowan says.
She has a new partner now, Chris McManus, whom she met on a blind date. He’s Scottish and works for a distillery. “Chris is oblivious to it all,” she says, referring to her Instagram page. “When we met he didn’t know what I did for a living. People often come up to him at events and ask him for a photograph and he just thinks it’s nuts!”
McGowan is building a house around the corner from the one she’s in. She plans to move next November and is excited at the prospect. “The last time I bought a house was 23 years ago. But then I started getting boxes delivered to the house. Then Darragh grew up and Chris came along. It’s just too small for us now. I’m particularly looking forward to having a basement as a workspace. When I go up those stairs I will be able to leave it behind each evening.”
She finds it difficult to relax and prefers to be busy, but attends a gym every day and finds it helps. “I would crack up doing yoga and meditation,” she says. “It’s just too slow. I need to get a sweat on. Even walking doesn’t do it for me.”
However, this tendency to be busy is beneficial for her work. “Every day is different for me now and it’s such an adrenaline rush. When I did a pop-up in Kildare Village recently people were coming from every corner of the country to meet me and I just loved that. I like talking to people and I love the whole creative side of it. Long may it continue.”
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