Kat Clark’s story does not begin with a ring light or a viral moment. It begins on a tiny island with a population of 3,000 people, a six-week-old baby, and a relationship she needed to escape. 

The Australian creator, who now counts well over 10 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and two product-based businesses among her achievements, has built everything from a starting point most people would struggle to recover from, and she has done it by saying yes before she knew how.

“I always wanted to be like a singer or an actor or something to do in the entertainment industry,” Kat recalls of her teenage years in Brisbane. “But my parents were like, ‘No, you have to go to [university].’” When she fell pregnant at 16 and had her daughter Latisha on her 17th birthday, the path her parents had envisioned closed entirely. What opened instead was far harder and ultimately far more defining.

After leaving home with a six-week-old baby and moving to Thursday Island with her then-partner, Kat found herself isolated and in danger. Cut off from friends, her finances controlled, and without a phone, she spent two years in the relationship before gathering the courage to leave. She secretly saved $2 each week until she had enough to buy a cheap mobile phone, reconnect with friends, and board a train back to Brisbane. The night before she left, her partner hid her ID, passport, and baby photos. She waited until he fell asleep, found them, repacked her bag, and didn’t look back.

“That’s kind of where my life started to improve,” she says. “Once I left that toxic relationship, I was able to focus on me, focus on my baby, because I didn’t want to be the stereotypical teen mom.”

Turning a 9-to-5 Into a Digital Career 

Kat returned to Brisbane without a Year 12 qualification (secondary education certifications) and took a job as a telemarketer. Within five years, she had worked her way up to project manager, married, and had a second daughter, Deja. The career looked good on paper. It didn’t feel right.

“Even though I was making a decent amount of money and providing for my family, I still didn’t feel fulfilled,” she says. “I almost felt like I was going to work, pretending to be like some professional girl that I just really wasn’t.”

The turning point came at a gym, where she spotted a sign in the on-site cafe: looking for an owner. She had no cafe experience and no business background. She took it anyway. To grow the business beyond gym-goers, she started posting recipe videos to Musical.ly, the platform that would become TikTok, on her children’s suggestion.

“My videos were just going viral. People loved the recipes I was creating. They were getting really intrigued by my family because my daughter would walk in the background and they’d be like, what do you mean you have a grown daughter?”

She launched a paid Facebook group offering weekly recipes for around $10 a month. It grew so fast that it replaced her cafe income almost immediately, and she let the cafe go. The shift from recipe creator to full lifestyle vlogger came the night of Latisha’s 18th birthday, when Kat was turned away at the venue door for not having her ID. The vlog went viral, morning television came calling, and the format stuck.

“That’s when I was like, ‘You know what, I’m gonna keep vlogging,’” she says. Her content philosophy has remained consistent ever since: “Film something you do every single day and just turn it into content. You don’t have to come up with spectacular ideas. You’re just filming what you’re actually doing.”

Building Kaladé

As Kat’s platform grew, so did the pressure to build something lasting. Her father’s recurring warning, that her 15 minutes of fame were almost up, pushed her to think beyond brand deals. The catalyst for her first product business was her daughter Déjà’s severe eczema, which had spread across her arms, legs, and face during the period the family was posting popular hair tutorial videos. Online bullying followed.

“I need to find some products that actually work for my daughter,” Kat says. “I found that there were products that worked, but sometimes they smelled funny or they weren’t the right consistency. They looked ugly. They looked like they were for old people. And it wasn’t appealing to her.”

She founded Kaladé, the name combining the first two letters of Kat, Latisha, and Déjà. The launch sold nearly 10,000 products in the first four minutes. What followed was less triumphant. The family packed orders from their lounge room until 1 a.m., fell behind, and started receiving customer service complaints before shipments went out.

“I really truly underestimated running a business,” Kat says. “But since then, we’ve learned so much. We’ve got a whole team that helps us look after everything now. We’ve got a warehouse. Thank God we’re not running our business in our house anymore.”

Co-Founding Sunny Dé

Kat’s second venture came from Déjà, who, at 14, came to her mother with a plan to start a swimwear brand. Kat said no, gave her a list of conditions to meet, and expected the idea to fizzle. It didn’t.

“It was like every week, it was like clockwork. She’s like, ‘Mom, I want to start my business. When can I start my business?’ She was very determined.”

Déjà was already earning income from her own brand deals. When Kat offered to help if Déjà invested her own money, she didn’t hesitate. Sunny Dé launched using Kaladé’s existing warehouse and staff, with Déjà hands-on across design, sampling, and finance. She has since grown her own TikTok following to 5.7 million.

The Move to Los Angeles

Earlier this year, Kat relocated her family from Australia to Los Angeles, describing it as a deliberate bet on a bigger stage after reaching a growth ceiling at home.

“I’ve always been the person who thinks I don’t want to live my life with regret. I feel like when I kind of reached a point in my content creation journey where I’ve hit a level where I couldn’t grow anymore, where I was based, I wanted to see what else was out there.”

The move was also driven by her desire to support Déjà, whose entrepreneurial ambitions echo her own. Kaladé’s next goal is a U.S. retail presence. “We’re in stores in Australia, but to be in stores over in the U.S. – I feel like it would be so exciting,” she says.

Advice for Creators

For creators looking to build beyond social media, Kat’s advice cuts straight to the point: “One thing that I always live by is just say ‘Yes’ and figure it out later. I think the more you say ‘Yes,’ the more it leads you down a path you are happy to go. But if you stay stuck and you are too scared to take those chances, you’re not going anywhere in life.”

Her vision for what comes next is equally straightforward: “Next chapter is really building my brand over here. Not just my social media creator brand, but my skincare business. I would like to see it in one of the major retailers here, whether it’s Sephora, Ulta, Target, or similar. That would be a dream come true. And also to support my daughter’s dreams and just to keep saying ‘yes’ and figuring it out later.”