Building a 7-figure consulting business through Instagram

After graduating from Harvard Law School in the early 2000s, Maria Brito was poised to have a successful career as a corporate lawyer. There was just one catch: she hated practicing corporate law.

Instead, her true passion was art. Throughout the early 2000s she started visiting New York galleries and even started to recommend pieces for purchase to her friends. Eventually, it dawned on her that high net worth individuals would pay her for the recommendations that she was giving out for free.

In 2009, Maria quit her law firm job and launched a new career as an art buying consultant. She also invested a significant portion of her time into creating online content, first with a blog and then later on social media. She eventually grew her audience to over 200,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and email, and she’s leveraged this audience to sign book deals, run brand sponsorship campaigns, and bring in dozens of wealthy clients that include Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean "Diddy" Combs.

In a recent interview, she explained to me her content creation process, her philosophy on Instagram sponsorship deals, and why so many high net worth individuals trust her to buy art for their collections, often after seeing only a static iPhone photo of the piece she’s recommending for purchase.