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Fashion entrepreneur and social media influencer Lisa McGowan paid herself a bumper €3.06m in 2024. New accounts filed by Ms McGowan’s Lisa’s Lust List Ltd show that last year her pay and pension package more than doubled from €1.
29m to €3.06m. Ms McGowan’s pay was made up of €2.
679m in emoluments and €384,002 in pension contributions. The pay of €2.679m for 2024 equates to a bumper average pre-tax pay of €51,520 per week, or €7,339 per day.
She is the firm’s only director and the pay for 2024 is almost three times her pay of €949,575 for 2023. The 137pc increase in the overall pay package for Ms McGowan was the chief factor behind the firm recording a post-tax loss of €736,075 for the year. This contributed to accumulated profits at the company reducing from €1.
195m to €459,677. Read more The payout to Ms McGowan also contributed to the company’s cash pile taking a hit, reducing from €1.3m to €727,254.
The abridged accounts don’t disclose revenues generated last year. Ms McGowan, from Tullamore, Co Offaly, only started her online promotional work after she won the best-dressed lady competition at the Galway Races in 2016. An insurance broker by profession in the family firm, the 52-year-old incorporated Lisa’s Lust List Ltd in November 2017.
The business has expanded with Ms McGowan now selling clothes, accessories and beauty products on her lisaslustlist.ie website under her Lisa & Co brand. Ms McGowan also set up a new company, Jentro Ltd, in 2023 as her online business continues to flourish and a joint venture company, LMLB Beauty Ltd, has yet to file its 2024 accounts but made post-tax profits of €895,660 in 2023.
Her Lisa’s Lust List site specialises in promoting products including fashion items, beauty, health, travel and homeware, mainly produced by Irish-based small to medium-sized enterprises. I never started this to make money The fashion blogger’s Lisa’s Lust List Facebook page has 216,000 followers while her Instagram following has increased to 188,000. In an interview with the Sunday Independent in 2023, Ms McGowan said she was surprised when her income made national headlines.
“Look, I didn’t steal it, I earned it and half of it went to the tax man,” she joked at the time. “I never started this to make money, and if it all finished tomorrow I would still be OK,” she said. Lisa McGowan is now selling clothes, accessories and beauty products after building brand Today's News in 90 Seconds - April 4th “Now that I think about it, yes, I have done very well — but it didn’t come overnight.
“I’ve been slogging at this for eight or nine years. People don’t see the graft that goes into it. It’s not like, all of a sudden, I’ve made a million.
That’s not how it works.” The fashion blogger recounted how she started her business and said at one point she was working so hard she crashed her car out of exhaustion as she juggled her job as an insurance broker in her family’s business with her work as an influencer. “I was working 22 out of 24 hours a day.
My relationship with my son suffered, my relationship with my parents suffered. I was trying to do too much,” she said at the time. Describing her work life, she said: “When I wake in the morning I’m on my phone.
When I go to bed at night I’m on my phone. When I wake to go to the bathroom at 3am I’m on my phone. That is not a lie.
That is the reality of it.” Read more.
