by Google
From Miss Slovakia to the world of business. Ester is now behind her own brand Estywell, spreading awareness about self-love, a healthy relationship with food, and sustainability. In an open interview, she talks about the beginnings of her business, the hype on TikTok, personal growth, and why she doesn't want to promote fast fashion, alcohol, or unhealthy food.
How are you?
I'm doing great, but fast. I'm always terribly fast, but I'm doing great.
If you had to introduce yourself to someone who doesn't know you, who is Ester?
Ester is a woman who once didn't like herself. Today, I try to inspire other women to like themselves and feel good in their bodies. Actually, it's also a mission that I'm trying to translate into my brand. I know that it's not an easy process and my brand has evolved over time, it's gone through rebranding and so on, and I want to carry within it the idea of supporting women in self-love and a healthy approach to themselves.
But to identify myself even more, I think that I'm a completely ordinary woman who's just trying to pass something on, to inspire others to do something for themselves. I want food to be a source of energy for women, not a reason for remorse. For example, for them to have breakfast and feel full of strength after it, with the feeling that "I'll do it today." So that they don't chase unrealistic expectations and comparisons, but work on themselves with love and patience.
People still associate me with being on Miss and I don't mind at all, because it's true that it was a very nice project for me. At the same time, it was a kind of kicker, thanks to which I understood that if we want something, we can achieve it. Since then, I've moved a lot personally. I used to be quieter, more withdrawn, I didn't believe in myself as much as I do today. I may have looked better on the outside than I do now, but today I know that it's not important how we look, but how we feel about ourselves.
Since you mentioned Miss, why did you decide to participate and does it still affect you today?
It was during Covid, when there wasn't much to do, so I applied for Miss Slovakia somewhat spontaneously at the last minute, with the thought "why not, I'll try it". It wasn't my life goal or dream plan, I rather took it as an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and move somewhere.
So does it affect you in any way until now? Did you take anything away from it?
I think it helped me a lot at the beginning of my business, because those people knew me a little bit. So it was like I definitely had the doors more open than if I hadn't been there.
At the same time, I started making my Instagram active during Misska as soon as I knew I would be there. It's a little different there than in a reality show, it's not so much about having followers. But back then, the Instagram algorithm worked completely differently, you just had to be active and those profiles grew quite quickly. So I actually took advantage of that still pretty good era. But most of all, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and try something different.
What is your opinion on such beauty contests with hindsight?
I really liked how Miško Kováčik ran it when he was still the director. He changed it a bit, saying that Missys are not models. We are simply women who are supposed to be interesting in some way. And those criteria also evaluate it that way, but most people don't see it. It's not about which girl is the most beautiful. Of course, they are also chosen based on beauty, but he was really looking for interesting girls.
When I look at world competitions, it often feels so strange to me. As if it goes against my grain that what is actually evaluated there. Although, of course, charity or various activities are also taken into account somewhere, it's not always just about appearance. But it still seems that way on the outside. Even looking back, I sometimes tell myself that we were a bit like sheep there, we stood in line, all nicely straightened up... It's strange. But I have to say that they treated us very nicely, that's for sure.
And I have a feeling that the whole thing is shifting. After our year, Miss Slovakia started trying harder to break down those beauty ideals, which was great. And now I see it in the Czech Republic too, that they are also giving space there to girls who don't meet the "traditional" beauty standards. Just different girls, which I think is a very good direction.
It's good that you have such a good experience, because there are definitely girls who take something negative from there.
Of course, but we were a really good team. We had such a thing there that we supported each other, we stuck together. Because it was stressful and there were really stressful situations. For example, someone was embarrassed to film, or we went to do something and we had no idea what awaited us.
You couldn't imagine it, so we said to ourselves: "Let's make fun of it, let's enjoy it." And the result was even better in the end. At the same time, we had respect for it, because I was 23 years old at the time and I didn't know what it all entailed, what awaited us. But the fact that we were able to lighten it up and stick together was actually great.
Let's move on to your work. You said you started during Misska. When did you consciously focus your Instagram on healthy eating, self-care and similar topics?
I was already adding things like self-care or exercise during Misska, I enjoyed that. Then it became more fashion-oriented for a while, because it really caught my attention at the time. But now, the older I get, the more minimalist I am in fashion. I don't need to have so many things anymore, I don't want to always have the latest trends and fast fashion pieces. I have a lot less clothes in my closet and currently I have a bunch of things at home that I plan to put on a bazaar that we want to do with the girls and the proceeds would go to some charity. Because a lot has accumulated from those collaborations and I'm sorry to just put it aside or throw it away.
I myself have changed in this regard. I don't want to be in my 30s, which is already three years away, someone who shows off what she's wearing every day. Rather, I want what I share to have value for someone and when I add something, I look at it from that side as well, whether it will give someone something.
Before, I had completely different numbers on Instagram, I had much greater reach when I added more superficial things like photos in a swimsuit that got likes. I had videos that had millions of views. But now... now I'm not about reach anymore. I think that what I put out there is my calling card and when someone wants to connect me with their brand, it's because I radiate something. That I'm representative for them.
And that's how I feel when I choose someone for my Estywell brand. I prefer to choose someone who may have fewer followers, but is authentic and shares the same values as me and I identify with them. That's much more important to me than the number of followers.
Overall, your Instagram looks very clean and aesthetic. Even though, as you mentioned, it's no longer about fashion, it still has its visual level. Do you get inspiration for that visual somewhere?
Hmm, what do I know... definitely yes. I think we are always influenced by who we follow and what we follow. I also have sorted profiles on Instagram, I only follow things that interest me. I usually find inspiration there that I could create, even from abroad... always something new and interesting.
I mainly have things there like exercise, healthy eating, mantras, affirmations and motivational things. I don't follow those perfect profiles anymore and I've also reconsidered who I actually want to follow. When I see someone who is an influencer and only talks about themselves, it seems downright unsympathetic to me. And yet, I didn't find it strange at all before, and I didn't even think about it.
Today, I see it as us being here to give these people something, not to unnecessarily frustrate them. I don't want to be someone who shows himself in the best possible light and then makes others feel worse. That someone looks at a photo and says, "You look great, but I feel bad because I don't look like that." And that's exactly what I want to avoid.
Of course, I want the profile to be aesthetic, nice and tidy. When I have some photo shoots, or even all the photos we have on Estywell are really nice in my opinion, we also try to make it visually pleasing on the e-shop. So when you have quality materials, it's not that difficult to make your Instagram look aesthetically pleasing.
What is your dream collaboration and, conversely, what is a complete no-go for you?
Wow, I really have to think about that... Because I think there are quite a few "no-go" collaborations. Thanks to Vidad, I have a lot of offers, which is really great. At the same time, the fact that I have a separate company, manage my finances, and can earn money thanks to Instagram is great. I probably wouldn't have been able to make that kind of income on my own. It's brutal that I have extra money and can get almost anything I need, whether it's products or services through collaboration. I think that's amazing.
But that's exactly why I'm very selective now. For me, a no-go is anything that doesn't play with me, that doesn't fit with who I am and what my values are. Sure, I've had collaborations in the past that I didn't fully identify with, probably like everyone else, because they were well paid and you just need to make a living, but I wouldn't do that anymore. For example, I reject some ultra fast fashion brands or anything that simply doesn't suit me, because I know that if I don't believe in it, my followers can't believe it either. I don't want to put out something that I don't fully identify with, because then my profile would go completely down.
So no Temu or McDonald's.
Temu at all. And I also can't imagine collaborating with unhealthy food. Sure, I can have a cheeseburger and nothing will happen to me, hey, but I wouldn't want it to be something that I promote.
I generally perceive food quite functionally. I enjoy good food, but at the same time I say to myself: "Okay, if I eat McDonald's, I'll be tired, it'll be hard for me." But I don't want to feel sick, I don't want to experience it. I'd rather have four bananas. It's not even about quantity, but about quality and what a person puts into themselves.
So Temu, McDonald's, but also things like IQOS or electronic cigarettes are a complete no for me. And of course, alcohol. I know it's a trend these days that even world celebrities like the Kardashians have their own alcohol brands, but I can't imagine that. And I'm a person who likes to have a drink sometimes, or when I go to a party once in a while, I'll have wine or something else. But I don't want to motivate people to drink just because someone shows it to them on Instagram.
I don't watch TV, I don't follow the media, and I often use the evenings to work, because the evenings are such a quiet time for me when I can concentrate. Even though I have great babes on my team who help me in the warehouse, with social media, the e-shop, and customer service, at the end of the day I'm still the one who makes all the key decisions. I look for suppliers, I come up with new products, I manage the entire project.
There's a lot. Sometimes in the evenings I laugh that my day lasted seven minutes. A guy comes home from work and I tell him: "I don't know what happened. I snapped my fingers and suddenly it's seven in the evening, I haven't worked out yet, I just had lunch...", because the work completely absorbs me.
One last question about creation, how do you perceive the competition between influencers? After all, there are more and more of them.
I perceive it as those who were once the biggest, have remained big and the medium-sized ones, in my opinion, have a very hard time moving up. There are now a brutal number of micro-influencers, but I think that only a few are really high-quality. I don't completely perceive the competition as such, but it is certainly greater, because the reach is lower, there is a huge amount of content on Instagram and the audience has naturally spread out among all of us.
But I don't perceive it negatively. I think it's more important to be grateful for this work and at the same time realize that it doesn't have to last forever. I don't take it as something I can rely on 100% for the future. After all, it can all change, for example, a new social network, a new trend, a new generation will come. We can already see it on TikTok that those who were big on Instagram may not automatically be successful there too. So I think we need to make the most of what we have, but at the same time prepare for the fact that the market can change at any time. We'll see where it all goes.
We can move on to your brand. How did the idea to create my own brand come about and why these products?
When I started thinking about what I actually wanted to do, I was working at Lidl. At first I was there as an intern, then they hired me full-time and that's when I realized that I didn't really want to do it. As an intern, I perceived it completely differently, but when I had to put one hundred percent of my energy into something that wasn't mine every day, I felt that it wasn't the path for me. I felt that I had the potential for something more and so I quit.
The brand was created because I couldn't find a vegan protein that I liked. I had cystic acne and I knew that whey and cow's milk made it worse. And although I'm not vegan, I eat meat, sometimes goat's or lactose-free cow's milk, I see it as a plant-based brand for everyone. You don't have to be vegan to eat our products.
In my opinion, our vegan proteins are the best product we have. I still don't understand where I found the supplier and how we actually put it all together. We've received a lot of messages from women who have various intolerances, histamine problems, etc. that they can't eat classic sweet things, but our proteins suit them and they don't feel any pain. That's the absolute best for me and that's exactly why I do it.
Sure, we also have viral products like freeze-dried fruit that's all the rage on TikTok. It's a great product, healthy, kids love it, but it's not really something that would change lives. It's just a "super product", an extra benefit. Viral, easy to sell, people crunch on it because it's tasty, without added sugar and visually beautiful. But that's not the vision of my brand, it just helps the brand grow and thrive.
People often think that if I sell one big bag of fruit for €10.90, I'll make a lot of money. But from a kilo of fruit you get 100-200 grams of freeze-dried fruit and that still has to be packaged, you have to pay the e-shop, the warehouse, the employees... It's a long-term struggle. But I really appreciate that it's growing and that there are people who like it. And of course, I'll say about every product that it's "mega". Because imagine that you have your own brand, you develop a product for months, you make samples, you test it, like now the new matcha butter, which we tuned for four months until it was good. Why wouldn't I then release it saying that it's great? After all, it's mine, I put energy into it and I believe in it. Otherwise, I wouldn't release it at all.
So the first product was protein?
No, wait, protein wasn't the first. I wanted it first, but I couldn't find anyone who could make it for me the way I imagined it. So I finally started with something else and found bars.
We launched an e-shop and had two vegan bars. We don't even sell them anymore, but I'm still thinking about maybe having them made again because people ask for them. And by then I had already paid for everything, it cost me over ten thousand euros just for those two bars. We had two pallets full of bars in the warehouse and I was looking at it and thinking, "What am I going to do with it now?" I couldn't even imagine how many pieces there were.
The bars had a one-year warranty and I knew that I had to sell them in three quarters of a year at the latest. So I started calculating how many pieces I had to sell every day. When the first order came in, I was completely blown away. That someone actually bought it, that someone wanted to support what I do, and that was unbelievable to me.
Every day I packed the boxes in my bag, walked to Packeta, handed over the packages, and went back to work. I packed it all myself, I didn't have money for a part-time job. Only later, when there were more orders, could I afford to invite someone. Then the proteins arrived and suddenly there were so many that I had a car full of packages. I drove them to the depot from Žilina to Strečno because they wouldn't come to pick them up for me. And when they finally started coming to pick up the packages, I knew we had reached some kind of milestone, I think it was when we had about 300 packages a month. I was happy that it was going well.
I still see it as us at the beginning. It's already starting to take shape, but the fact that we went through the rebranding has dragged out the whole process a bit. Now I feel like it's finally holding together and that we can start creating what we wanted from the beginning. Building a community and doing activities for women. Now we'll have another event... we're still inventing something, we still want to create.
What was the hardest thing at the very beginning? Getting customers, creating a product or something else?
I guess it's just about enduring it all. Even though sometimes you feel like throwing everything out the window, including the computer, the shelves, the entire warehouse, haha. There will be moments when something seems completely unsolvable, for example, just connecting all the systems in the background, setting up processes so that it all works... these are things that are not talked about externally, but they are really difficult.
Finding suppliers was also difficult. But the hardest thing is probably really enduring it all, knowing that it won't always be rosy. That, for example, in e-commerce, summer is always weak because people are outside, they buy less, and you have to manage it, endure it, and then make the most of autumn, winter or spring, when that season is stronger. It's just a daily struggle with problems. From morning to night. And I think every entrepreneur will tell themselves that there are days when it's really annoying, but when you love it, you keep going.
Let's go back to the fruit on TikTok. I also had a full feed of your ads and I also noticed the hate in the comments. How did you feel about that?
I admit that I don't even read the comments much. I just glance at what TikTok throws into my notifications. I don't spend any time on TikTok, only when I'm adding something there. If I scroll somewhere to relax, I don't really know how Instagram and TikTok work.
This year we started running ads there, until then we only had native content and that also had great numbers and sold. But ads are a completely different intervention. It reaches a huge audience and logically there will be hate there. Today, I see it this way: when something reaches such a wide audience, it's completely natural that there will be people who will write unpleasant comments. On the contrary, if there were only nice comments under it, it means that it only reached a narrow circle of people.
And honestly, I think it's actually a good sign. When someone provokes reactions, even negative ones, it means that people notice them. After all, even if we look at the greatest creators, an awful lot of people hate them. Some people don't like you because you're affected, some people can't remember your name, but the impact is there. So I don't worry about it anymore.
Of course, when it all started, I was in shock. I would be lying if I said I wasn't. My boyfriend and friends also asked me if I was okay. But it actually showed me that I have healthy self-confidence, because I know what's behind all this, that I sit here at the computer for 15 hours a day, dealing with the e-shop, the brand, marketing, and people think that I'll make a one-minute video and earn millions.
And that's exactly it, in my opinion, no one who runs their own business would write me something like that. If ten entrepreneurs told me, "Ester, shame on you, you're doing it completely wrong," I would probably be bothered. But what comes in the comments are not relevant opinions. Of course, I don't do everything perfectly, I could definitely do many things better, but I always say that it's better to put it out there and improve it along the way than to wait until it's perfect, because I would never release it.
And that's exactly how I felt about entrepreneurship. At the beginning, I wanted to create a completely cosmic product and then I found out that it couldn't be done that way. So I said to myself, okay, I'll start with what I know and do the best I can. And that's how it all came about.
What are your next plans with the brand? What is your goal?
My goal so far has mainly been to connect more with the brand. I felt like at some point there were too many girls, even strangers, advertising for me, and suddenly I got a little lost in it. Now I have a great team of women around me and I finally feel like it all makes sense. I don't want the brand to be just about me, but at the same time I want to give it a more personal story. Start showing more behind the scenes, more of me, more of real life, and I feel like we're doing quite well so far.
I would like to build more community, especially for women. We also started a "newsletter club" where I send letters, my own thoughts, what's happening to me, what I'm going through. I want to be closer to those women, ask them what they want, give them space to make decisions. We can use that to test products, involve them in the process, because I'm really not doing it just for profit. If I did it for money, I would close the brand in a year.
Sure, the company has to grow because we have to pay people, produce new products and that costs something. But that is not my ultimate goal, I really want to help women feel good. I have gone through eating disorders myself and I know how hard it is. For years I did not realize how much it affected me every second of the day. Only in retrospect did I understand that it was not a "small problem", but something that took away my joy from life.
Today I want to show women that life is about something else. That they can do what they enjoy, that they don't have to be afraid, that they have the right to feel good in their bodies, but also in what they do, that health is not only physical, but also mental and emotional. And that we only have one life. There is only the moment we are living now. So go and do what makes sense to you.
What would you tell young people who want to start creating or starting their own brand?
I would definitely tell them not to expect anything to be perfect. And certainly not to expect it to be easy. Don't try to have everything perfect right from the start, just go for it, even if it's not tip-top yet. The market itself will show you what works and what needs to be improved. Things get better just by doing them.
I also have the same problem, for example, I want to make videos with a microphone, but I don't know how to use it properly yet, but I'll make the video anyway, put it out and I know that when I make the 150th, it will definitely be much better. But I can't wait for the 150th and then put out the first, it's simply not possible.
Go and do the best you can at that moment. It doesn't have to be 100%. For example, I've never felt that something I put out is completely perfect, but it's good enough to make sense. And that's enough.
Don't worry, people will support you. And even if someone evaluates or criticizes, we criticize ourselves the most anyway. Everyone carries that inner voice within them that already brings doubts. So don't listen to it too much and just do it. 💫
