Unveiling The Blueprint For Media Mogulship: The Selena Gomez Approach

Selena Gomez has gone from child star to billionaire multi-threat, but she hasn’t just acted, danced and sung her way to success. She’s also produced, cooked and made it all up (by which we mean, launched a makeup brand). Her path is one that many would want to follow, so it’s worth taking a closer look at how she went from child star on Barney to acting on screen with the legendary Steve Martin and Martin Short and, arguably, being—financially—worth more than them both.

Rare Passion

Selena has always had a strong inner compass and she’s had a role in picking her projects and her path. Despite being once told by a casting director that she was “not strong enough to helm her own show,” Selena persevered and landed the leading role on Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place. She was also not shy about her ambitions. Her goal wasn’t just to be a working actress, from a young age, she was vocal about also wanting to be a singer.

The first show that Selena executive produced was 13 Reasons Why, and at only 25 years old. Then, during the pandemic, she really took things into her own hands and, realizing that she’d always wanted to learn to cook and now had the time, she decided to embark on a journey of learning… and to invite her fans in on it. This was the birth of Selena+Chef, which has been a huge success.

Gourmet Values

Selena has also always been very values-first. Mental health has long been important to her, as evidenced by the theme of the first TV show she produced, which dealt with substance abuse, bullying, suicide and more. She then went on to launch Wondermind, a “mental fitness ecosystem” comprised of expert-backed content (e.g., podcasts, newsletters, worksheets, articles, et al.).

The idea is that it helps its users gain a better understanding of mental health as a whole, and, more specifically, of their own mental health. It’s intended to meet them where they’re at in their own mental health journey—even if they’re not sure they’ve yet begun a journey. She followed this by sharing her own mental health journey in her 2022 documentary My Mind & Me. This move showed her fan base how true she was to her values. They’re so important to her that she’s willing to be vulnerable in the public eye.

Even her beauty brand has a mental health component. “Makeup is something to enjoy, it’s not something you need. I want every person to feel beautiful exactly as they are,” says Selena, “…whether that’s rocking a full face of bold makeup or barely any makeup at all.”

In addition to mental health, philanthropy is important to Selena—or perhaps one could describe it as empathy. With her show Selena+Chef, she realized that her guests may have causes or values that are just as important to them as Wondermind is to her, and she makes space on every episode for her guests to speak to their cause. She also donates $10K per episode to the chef’s charity of choice as a thank you for engaging with her.

Magical Connection

Selena+Chef underscores the celebrity’s connection with her audience in the format itself; whereas most cooking shows feature the recurring celebrity as the expert, in this show, she, like the audience, is learning to cook How to Use Streaming to Strengthen Audience Connection when published>. This isn’t the first time that Selena has put herself in a position to maximize relatability between her and the audience.

In fact, Selena herself gives makeup tutorials on her brand’s social media accounts. She recorded hours and hours of herself doing her makeup for Selena + Chef, which is filmed in her home, which means that she, like her audience, does her makeup herself, at home.

In a way, this relatability is an extension of what Selena created as Alex on Wizards of Waverly Place. One of the most memorable moments of the show were those in which Alex and her best friend Harper sang “The Funky Hat Song,” which included a dance they did every time they saw someone wearing a hat. “It became so popular because it was so relatable. Alex and Harper were doing something that all girls and their best friends did: made up songs and dances. It also had one other advantage,” explains Eve Weston, an expert on experience design who wrote and choreographed the dance during her time working on Wizards, “The Funky Hat Song gives the audience the opportunity to be a part of the story world.” In either direction, it helped put Selena on equal footing as her fan base from early in her career.

Mind Over Matter

While Selena’s character on Wizards of Waverly Place was a practitioner of magic, there’s no spell one can cast to achieve her level of success. There is, however, a formula. Selena has always followed her passions; she didn’t blindly follow the advice of others, she pursued projects and avenues that meant something to her and she did so with relentless determination. Selena never loses sight of her values. All of her projects are inline with her beliefs and many of them go further than that to actually take action in arenas where she’d like to make a difference. And finally, despite being passion and values-driven, Selena knows that she’s not doing this all for herself. She has an audience and a fanbase and she connects with them regularly and relatably. As impressive as her empire is, in some ways, it might just be as easy as 1-2-3.