• Danielle Fewings, founder of Get Clear Beauty, has invested in cosmetic treatments since she was 27.
• Fewings' journey with aesthetic procedures began with a breast reduction and includes Botox and filler.
• Her $150,000 investment in herself has supported both personal confidence and professional success.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Danielle Fewings, a 40-year-old entrepreneur from New York City. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I started my career in digital marketing and ran my own agency from 2020 until 2025, when I sold it. I'm now the founder of Get Clear Beauty, an aesthetic treatment marketplace, which I started in 2026.

I've always felt like there was something missing from my appearance, as if someone much more confident was buried beneath it all. I got my first procedure done in 2013 and have had many since.

I don't regret any of them.

I'm the most treatment‑forward person in almost every room I'm in

In my broader New York circle, routine maintenance is completely normal. People are getting Botox and lip filler, and a few have had breast augmentations. Most are dipping in rather than going all in.

I'm honestly the most treatment-forward person in almost every room I'm in. In any given conversation, I'm the one who's had the most work done, which is a little wild when I think about it.

For most of the people I know, the max is Botox. Routine maintenance is common around me, but no one I'm close to has done anywhere near as much as I have.

My first major decision was my breast reduction at 27

I wore a 32G and desperately wanted them smaller. I call this my gateway surgery because it was honestly a very easy recovery, so I had this ease as the template, which gave me the confidence to keep pursuing additional treatments.

It made me more willing to put myself out there, both in dating and especially in showing up online to create content for my business, which matters enormously when you're building something. It shifted how I approach relationships, too, both friendships and romantic ones.

When you feel confident inside and out, you see yourself as more valuable, recognize your worth, and become more selective about who you let into your life. As I've felt better about myself, I've been more intentional about the relationships I keep close, and I see a direct correlation between the two.

I've never made decisions due to outside pressure

My choices have always been personal. I've never done any of this for another person or because of outside pressure. It has always been about putting my best self forward, and if that takes some tweaks and some money, I'm willing to do it.

I'm a very confident person — I just haven't accepted every imperfection. My upper blepharoplasty is a good example: most people would say I didn't need it, and they would be right, because no one needs any of these things. I wanted it. My eyelids felt heavy, and I chose to change that.

I'm fully committed to antiaging and the maintenance it requires. I go to my quarterly Botox appointments and my annual lip filler appointments, and I'll be ready for a facelift when that time comes. The idea that aging gracefully means avoiding treatments is absurd; aging gracefully is doing whatever feels good to you as an individual.

The cost breakdown

Because my first breast surgery was a reduction, I paid $6,000 out of pocket, and my insurance covered the rest. I had a full-body makeover in the Dominican Republic, which included a tummy tuck, skin tightening, and two further breast surgeries after major weight loss, costing around $12,000. I've also had liposuction, scar revision, an upper blepharoplasty, Sculptra and filler, a Morpheus8 treatment on my legs, tattoo removal, lip blushing, microblading and shading, Invisalign, and teeth whitening. These procedures have cost about $50,000 in total.

The maintenance I keep up with regularly includes manicures and pedicures, which I have gotten every two weeks for the past 10 years; lash extensions, which I have gotten every three weeks for about 15 years; Botox; more filler; peels and lasers; tanning; and haircuts. The recurring maintenance has cost about $105,000 over time.

What struck me is that the one-time procedures come to about $50,000, but the quiet, recurring maintenance is over $100,000. The costs nobody tracks are the ones that add up the most. That is exactly why I built Get Clear Beauty.

Each procedure served a purpose

My whole philosophy has been doing high-maintenance things to stay low-maintenance. The lashes, manicures and pedicures, lip blushing, and microblading are all upkeep that let me feel put-together with minimal effort, and because of them, I barely wear makeup, so some of that cost is a trade-off.

The bigger procedures came from real changes in my body. My weight has gone up and down for years, and that has driven a lot of it. The Morpheus8 on my legs was for skin laxity, because I'm not ready for a leg lift and probably don't need one. I've had three breast surgeries total.

I'd never do CoolSculpting, and I'd never have a nose job. I don't think CoolSculpting is cost-effective, and I've grown to love my nose.

My appearance impacts confidence, and confidence impacts business

When you're on 15 Zooms a week and constantly recording content to win business, looking and feeling your best matters.

Appearance affects business outcomes, but for me, it works through confidence. When I feel good about how I'm showing up, I represent my company more powerfully and carry my knowledge into the room in a way that lands.

I love how I look. 10 years ago, I never thought looking this way was achievable, and it's the result of a GLP-1 medication, surgeries, and really taking my appearance by the horns. I'm in a genuinely happy place with it.

• Influencer marketing can be messy and unpredictable.
• We asked top creator marketers about the main challenges they face when running campaigns.
• Marketers said choosing talent, approving content, and forecasting reach create the most headaches.

Influencer marketing has ballooned into a $12 billion industry in the US. And yet, running campaigns can still feel unpredictable.

Business Insider asked more than a dozen executives at top brands like Poppi, E.l.f. Beauty, and the National Football League what challenges they face when working with creators. Three common pain points emerged.

First, it's tough to find relevant talent amid a growing pool of content creators. It can also be tricky to agree on content copy when balancing a brand's messaging goals with the creator's own voice. Lastly, campaign performance can be erratic as social-media algorithms become more personalized and harder to crack.

Buying influencer ads, unlike TV spots or display ads, requires a human touch. It's tough to automate (despite some attempts to do so). Forty-five percent of brands said they relied on manual processes like spreadsheets, emails, and DMs to run creator campaigns, according to a June survey of 209 executives conducted by Northwestern University and LTK.

"We're dealing with people, and making content is their time and their business, and it's hard," said Lindsay Burstein, senior director of integrated social and communications at Keurig Dr Pepper. "We're always looking for ways to do it faster and in a way that feels more real-time so that we're keeping up with the pace and the culture of the internet. But also knowing that these are people. They have lives. They have other commitments."

Read on for more details on the common pain points that emerged from our conversations with marketing executives at 14 brands. These execs were recently featured in Business Insider's 2026 list of innovative influencer marketers.

1. It's hard to find the right creators for your brand when there are so many

• "The landscape of the influencer, creator, and affiliate model is changing every single day, and new people are coming in and identifying as an influencer," said Patrick O'Keefe, chief integrated marketing officer at E.l.f. Beauty. "I would love a model or a plan or a program that would capture all the new people coming into this space in real time."
• "We've just seen this space get so much more saturated than it ever has before," said Kiara Kempski, vice president of global consumer marketing at The Knot Worldwide. "The game of scale is totally changing."

2. Breaking through the noise

• "The feed is so loud right now," said Anna Doré, Rothy's vice president of brand and communications. "In this AI-driven algorithm world where we're all being served the same content on the feed, we, more than ever, are going to be looking to great tastemakers."
• "There is a ton of content that's just content for content's sake that's out there," said Ian Trombetta, the National Football League's senior vice president of global social, creator, and content marketing. "The creative bar is going up in order for us to drive that organic reach and engagement."
• Ninety to 95% of the content that we see in our own feeds is not from accounts we follow, Keurig Dr Pepper's Lindsay Burstein said. "Followership matters a little, but not nearly as much as I think it once did because the algorithms just don't favor it the way that we used to."

3. Agreeing on content that works for both a brand and a creator's audience

• Some brands "are a little bit too prescriptive and don't allow the creators to do what it is that they really are good at, which is understanding their audience and how to create great content and formats that work for their audience," the NFL's Trombetta said.
• "Overbriefed" projects are "not the business that we want to be in," said Sophia Sesto, Poppi's vice president of culture. "We want to take these opportunities and work with the talent to make something special" and "lean into their personalities and let them carry the brand forward with us."
• "For a long time, the industry treated creators as ad placements," said Samim Sadrzadeh, director of creator content and partnerships at Disney. "We think that significantly undersells the value they actually bring."

• "We start from a pretty simple place, which is creators know their audiences better than we ever will," said Stacy Martinet, Adobe's chief content and creative officer. "The most effective approach has been to treat creators as creative partners, first and foremost."

Desde cedo o Estado Novo utilizou ferramentas estéticas e metodológicas da propaganda moderna, contribuindo largamente para uma clara aproximação ao que hoje chamamos marketing político.

The penalty, one of the largest levied against a tech giant, stemmed from a lawsuit by New Mexico claiming the social media company had misled users about their data privacy.

© Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

Rita Marques presidia à Fundação Livraria Lello. Na comissão executiva do grupo Pestana, a ex-governante será responsável pelas tecnologias de informação e marketing.

© RODRIGO ANTUNES/LUSA

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