On a cloudy day in March, I interviewed former Miss Hong Kong 2005 finalist Erica Yuen Mi-ming 袁彌明 at the Causeway Bay branch of her booming Mi Ming Mart skincare business. Capitalizing on her celebrity status, she started her own YouTube channel to do skincare product reviews. These days however, the famous video blogger-turned-businesswoman is busy not with showbiz commitments but with following up suppliers and cultivating her own brand of personalized customer service at Mi Ming Mart and her Kami Teaspresso coffee and tea shop.

Let’s start with a product that changed your life. What is one product that you truly swear by?

Up until age 25, my skin was really trouble-free but then it started getting dry then oily. I tried a variety of skincare products in the market but there really was no guarantee of long-term improvements. I decided to try this little bottle of squalene, which is a plant-derived substance that’s similar to the oil your skin glands secrete. I had to buy it overseas because I couldn’t find any in the local market. After using one drop each night, I saw visible results in one week and the tiny bottle lasted me a month. Something so good just had to be shared on my video blog. It’s one of my constantly best-selling products since I started offering it in my shops. I believe I’ve sold 20,000 bottles of it so far. My mom uses it religiously on her face and neck each night. It’s really effective and all organic.

You were featured in a CNN Go article as one of the top beauty video bloggers in Hong Kong. What kind of role did social media tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter play in your success as an entrepreneur?

Honestly, I was surprised. While I grant a lot of interviews as a celebrity and as a beauty blogger, I really wasn’t expecting CNN to come knocking. The way I look at it, Web 2.0 contributed a lot to the success of my business as well as my being featured in that article. Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Groupons – these are the most important tools an entrepreneur must have these days. As opposed to traditional media like print ads or TV commercials, my YouTube channel instantly reaches a lot of people and through the comments section, they can ask me and I can respond easily. Plus, it’s free!

What advice would you give to someone who’d like to start a video blogging career and be successful like you?

There are a lot of video bloggers who have become famous and are now sponsored by big-name brands. I can’t really say that all video bloggers will become popular, however I think that when you’re blogging, writing or reviewing a product, the most important is to put your heart into it. It has to be about sharing what you know. I started blogging because I wanted to share what I learned while looking for safe, healthy and good-quality skincare products. Along the way, I became a better-informed, wiser customer by asking the right questions and my viewers-turned-customers eventually adopted the same mindset too.

You are known to be very thorough, even doing research on ingredients and testing the products on yourself. How does this influence the way you run your business?

I have always been very detail-oriented. Mi Ming Mart started by coincidence when I was reviewing this green, vegetable powder that I had bought in the US. I raved about how it counter-acted the effects of my eating French fries and at the end of the video, I mentioned that I wanted to order some more and anyone who was interested to order as well should just contact me. I received 400 orders that day. I realized that people respond positively when they’re well informed about a product. Women spend so much money on skincare that I think it’s only right that we’re properly knowledgeable about what we put on our skin. I spend months up to a year researching about product ingredients and also make sure that my suppliers are reputable.

You now have three Mi Ming Mart shops in Hong Kong and a newly opened Japanese coffee and tea shop called Kami Teaspresso too. Food and skincare seem like a strange mix. Is there a shared philosophy behind these seemingly diverse businesses?

Mi Ming Mart started as an off-shoot of my beauty blogging while Kami Teaspresso was born out of my love for bubble teas. Still, both come from my ongoing quest to offer Hong Kong consumers more healthy options. There are a lot of bubble tea shops in Hong Kong right now but I discovered that most of them just use milk powder to make their mixes. At Kami Teaspresso, we use fresh milk instead of milk powder. We always try to use fresher and better ingredients, like fresh green tea powder imported from Japan, so it can be quite expensive. But I believe that when offered a choice between healthy and convenient, customers will always try to go for the healthier options.