Anna Bey Isn’t Anti-Luxury, But She’s Not Buying The Dream Anymore

Bey runs a popular lifestyle YouTube channel and an in-depth online program called Level Up Class, part of a broader suite of self-development courses she’s created over the years. Earlier offerings, like her finishing school School of Affluence, were often dismissed as “shallow” or “opportunistic.” But Bey saw them as a response to the gatekeeping of high society—a way to help ordinary women break into elite spaces.

Her content aimed to demystify this world and share the strategies that helped her access it. Today, her programs include The Elegant Stylist, Secrets of the Elite Woman, and her most grounded course yet, Level Up Class, which centers on personal branding, lifestyle refinement, and intentional self-elevation.

But over the past two years, her message has started to shift. She’s grown increasingly disillusioned with uncritical materialism, something reflected in recent uploads like:

“How Show-Off Culture Is RUINING Your Life,” “Why I’m Over High Society & Luxury Life,” “Toxic Culture of Luxury Closets,” “Why Quiet Luxury Is a Toxic Trend,” “I Chased Society’s Idea of Success & Lost Who I Am,” “The Dark Side of YouTube Success: My Biggest Regrets...,” and “Are You Buying Confidence or a Handbag?”

The cracks were showing. What once looked like a confident embrace of “the finer things” began to register as quiet discontent. I was intrigued. What prompts such a sharp reversal in a creator once written off as a superficial gold digger—now openly admitting that luxury and status didn’t deliver the fulfillment they promised?

The Ascension of Anna Bey

When I met with Anna to discuss the evolution of her content and her relationship to luxury, I admitted I was a silent observer. I’d subscribed to her channel years ago but couldn’t recall why. Anna’s content largely focused on breaking into high society and achieving a luxury lifestyle—things I admittedly never cared about—but she also posted videos on fashion and aesthetics, like how to dress elegantly. I found her straight-shooting style compelling. I liked peering into her world the way one might watch Animal Planet—not because it mirrored my life, but because it was fascinating in its own right.

I told her the real reason I wanted to talk: “I noticed some of your recent videos kept popping up, and they seemed like quite a different direction. I thought that was really interesting.” She seemed relieved. “I’ve had all kinds of journalistic experience over the years, so I’m just a bit fed up with that. But I thought the angle was interesting because it’s true—it is a hot topic for me, and I never really had a chance to talk to somebody about it.”

Who was Anna Bey before she became the poster woman for leveling up?

I got what she meant. I’d recently watched a cringy Sunrise segment from years ago, where she was met with thinly veiled mockery by Australian morning show hosts who clearly disdained her transparent upward-mobility strategy. I asked her to take me back—before elegance, luxury, and high society became her brand. Who was Anna Bey before she became the poster woman for leveling up?

“I grew up in a regular family,” she said. “I don’t come from any high-status or affluent background. Just a regular person.” Her first exposure to high society came by chance at 19 when she was living in Rome and dating a guy from that world. “Once you get a taste for it, it can become a bit addictive. It’s a nice experience. There are a lot of nice luxuries, and it’s entertaining. It’s fun.” The relationship didn’t last, and she wouldn’t go full Operation Tom Wambsgans until after what she calls the “dark phase” of her twenties: a period of chaos, bad habits, hard-partying, and other “non-PG behaviors.”

It was escapism, she explains. “I wasn’t really in the best place in my mind—in my soul. I guess I was battling with my own stuff. At that age, we tend to do that. We’re insecure. I was probably having a lot of anxiety that I was trying to escape, and the partying really helped.” Taking on a tone of introspection, she psychoanalyzes her younger self: “I guess I didn’t have a lot of self-respect. So I was positioning myself in a way that one can say—if we’re just going to use a very harsh metaphor—I was quite tacky.”

Looking back, she gets it. “When you don’t respect yourself or give yourself any self-love, it’s very easy to fall into a path where, yeah, you might be a bit vulgar. You might dress in a way you think is going to serve you, but it doesn’t. I was swearing a lot. I had a lot of foul language—just a few bits and bobs. And I realized, you know what? I think this is holding me back in life.” These anecdotes felt like they came from a place of deep pain, but the kind that’s been metabolized. She spoke like someone older, wiser, removed enough from the wreckage to name it clearly.

She couldn’t name a single “aha moment,” because there were many. “Sometimes we go through life [knowing] this is not right, but still continue. You don’t want to admit it to yourself.” Eventually, though, she reached the point of no return. Elegance, to her, became a personal development tool. “Not because I was trying to become something I was not,” she clarified, “it was more about reducing bad habits. I got passionate about the subject.” Elegance became a lifeline. A way out of the “tacky” behaviors of her twenties. A strategy for becoming someone new.

Her transformation began in 2010, a year she describes as “very negative.” She’d gone on a Swedish reality show seeking validation but felt she only “made a fool out of [herself].” Afterward, she returned to Sweden, enrolled in the country’s first formal Internet marketing program, and graduated with new clarity. In 2012, she launched a blog, putting her skills to work and quickly building a following. When blogs declined, she moved to YouTube and found a vacuum no one else was filling. “I just took off,” she recalls.

On Her Pivot Away from High Society & Luxury Living

Though she enjoyed her success and was passionate about the topics she spoke about, eventually, disillusionment set in, prompting those later-year uploads that took on a more introspective, self-critical tone. I wondered what prompted it. “Did you hit a wall on the hedonic treadmill and realize materialism couldn’t really replace a deeper philosophy or a stable sense of self?” I asked her. 

She remembers being pulled into shiny object syndrome in her twenties, especially against the backdrop of London, which she describes as “flashy wealth.” It was easy to normalize, to feel subtly brainwashed. “Not that someone is brainwashing you,” she clarified, “but we live in times where shiny object syndrome is everywhere. It’s been normalized for decades. It’s not new.”

Giving her younger self some grace, she added, “When you’re 20—and I can only speak for myself—but we’re a little bit underdeveloped in some chapters. We have insecurities, and I think it’s normal in that phase to want to validate ourselves through external measurements. That’s what I did.” By her early thirties, the cracks. “I think I was a little bit in denial,” she admitted. 

That said, she’s not anti-high society. “I’m not against it. I think it’s a fun place to be.” Even early on, she saw both sides of it. Some friends openly aspired to be trophy wives. A tempting idea, she concedes, but it never fully fit. She always felt like a “part-time tourist” in that world. “There comes a point where it becomes annoying,” she said. “But that’s the thing. Some people can be in that world full-time for life. And I’ve been thinking about why. I think some people are just in denial.”

"We live in times where shiny object syndrome is everywhere."

“They don’t want to accept the bad parts—or they just look away. They put up with it for the perks: quality of life, entertainment, connections, status, and validation. There are so many reasons.” She now sees that she did the same. “In my early thirties, I was still closing one eye. Still a bit in denial. But eventually—and I think this is just typical aging—you hit a point where you don’t want to lie to yourself anymore.”

I asked whether her shift in perspective came from some defining event or just a slow erosion. She gently challenged the question. “I’m not out of the game,” she said. “I still incorporate some of that lifestyle—just not as much because I’m not as interested.” There wasn’t one moment, she says, but the end of 2022 brought clarity. She remembers realizing the lifestyle no longer brought her joy. “And I thought, maybe it’s time to move on.”

“But it was hard to let go,” she admitted. “Because I had made so much content about it.” She stresses that she’s not anti-luxury now—just no longer interested in the side effects. The hardest thing to admit? How deeply she’d gotten sucked into the status signaling.

“Luxury, high society—it gives you self-validation. It boosts your sense of importance. It makes you feel like you’re somebody. That’s what status does when you chase it.” She’s quick to point out that status-seeking isn’t limited to the elite. “We can chase status in so many ways,” she said. But for her, it had taken over. “I got sucked into the whole Hermès game, buying those quota bags, the Kellys and the Birkins. When I had collected X amount, and they were just sitting there like trophies, I did think: what’s the point of all this?”

Recovering from Materialism & What ‘Leveling Up’ Means Now

Another turning point came when Anna realized her passion for “leveling up,” originally rooted in genuine self-improvement, had become too fixated on extrinsic markers and “high-value” objects. “When I achieved a lot of those things, I thought, did life actually get that much better?” she said. “I’m not talking about improving the basics—quality of life, freedom, time. I mean the shiny object chase. You think you’ll reach this happily-ever-after bubble, and life will be amazing. But it really wasn’t.” That’s when she knew something was off. “And the problem is myself, clearly,” she joked.

Her insight tracks with what the data says: hedonic adaptation is real. The cliché that “money doesn’t buy happiness” is, in fact, true—past a certain point. Once your needs are met and life is stable, more money (or status, or luxury) brings sharply diminishing returns. Studies used to cite $75k as the plateau; more recent data puts it closer to $500k. Either way, the curve flattens; it doesn’t rise indefinitely, nor is this principle exclusive to wealth. 

Curious, I’d noticed Anna’s Instagram following was full of accounts on stoicism, psychology, and philosophy—unusual for her niche. I asked if her inward turn had led her down a more spiritual or philosophical path. “Yeah, I’ve always been spiritual, but I never showed that in my content. I don’t think that will ever show. Maybe, I don’t know,” she said.

"There’s a burst of happiness when you buy the bag or sit on the yacht. But it doesn’t fill you the way resolving your own issues does."

“One of the big aha moments I had,” she continued, “was realizing you can have the flashiest lifestyle—be a trophy wife, a billionaire’s wife—it doesn’t matter. If you feel like crap inside, if you’re anxious, depressed, dealing with unresolved stuff 24/7, then what does it matter if you level up to the absolute highest level of society? You’re not going to feel better than anyone else.”

This wasn’t new territory for her. “Just for background, I’ve been in therapy for 10 years. It’s not like I just started with personal development. It’s been a big thing most of my adult life. But it became really clear I had to sort myself out from within. That’s what pulled me toward other topics, not just the flashy stuff.” This shift changed how she used social media. “I unfollowed a lot of accounts with all the flashy—I can’t see any more unboxings. I can’t. Maybe I’m able to speak like this because I’m in a privileged position, and I’ve had exposure to a certain life and level of wealth that not everybody has. So I understand maybe it’s easy for me to sit here dismissing all of that.”

She was careful to clarify she wasn’t judging anyone else. “I get why people want the shiny things—I’ve been there. But when you actually get them, you realize it doesn’t feel like anything. There’s a burst of happiness when you buy the bag or sit on the yacht. But it doesn’t fill you the way resolving your own issues does. When you can move through life with no F’s given and are totally at ease with yourself, that’s a different ballgame. That’s what I’m more interested in now.”

Navigating a More Mindful Approach to Luxury

In recent videos, Bey has opened up about how her luxury lifestyle began to feel overly materialistic, but she’s careful not to take an all-or-nothing stance. She hasn’t disavowed luxury altogether. She just no longer wants status-signaling to stand in for confidence or belonging. On the topic of belonging, she’s pragmatic. “Even though I see it differently today, I still 100% argue that it is what it is. If you want to move easily through certain circles, it helps to blend in and speak the same language as the tribe you’re trying to enter. It’s always been like that,” she said, nodding to evolutionary psychology.

Reflecting on the backlash she’s received, she suspects it’s because she made the implicit rules of high society explicit—something many would prefer to keep unsaid. “I understand why people want to blend in. I do it, too, from time to time. I’m not saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m so different, I’m so much better.’ I’m not like that.” In one video, she uses a scene from Succession to illustrate the subtle social faux pas that prevent people from blending in with high society, such as when Tom calls out Greg’s date for bringing a “ludicrously capacious bag” to the function.

She’s honest about the role luxury items used to play in her confidence. “There were probably many times I relied on my Hermès bags to feel confident walking into certain rooms or certain circles. I’m very honest with myself, so I had to ask myself, why am I like this? I thought I had worked through certain insecurities of mine in therapy. But clearly, there was some stuff that still needed work. These are the kinds of conversations I have with myself because I find them important, and they contribute to my personal growth.” 

Now, she’s begun testing herself, choosing not to rely on external markers to generate self-worth or a sense of belonging. But this isn’t about walking into high-society spaces obnoxiously to prove a point. It’s a private, internal shift toward deeper authenticity.

She’s also overhauled her shopping habits. “I haven’t shopped seriously in two years,” she said. She’s become far more intentional, stepping away from the social media novelty trap. Looking back, she says her habits bordered on clinical shopaholism—but it’s complicated, she adds, when your job depends on producing content that constantly showcases something new—new outfits, new purchases—anything novel that will keep followers interested in peeking into your life. It began to take its toll.

Despite her love for beauty and fashion, an inner conflict emerged. “I feel like that’s not actually where my strengths are,” she said. Though she has a knack for styling tips, she rejects the idea that her value lies in just taking cute outfit pictures. “I don’t want to dismiss creators who focus on that, I just want to go deeper. I feel like I have more to offer. So I decided: this doesn’t feel aligned with who I am anymore. From a work perspective, I don’t want to be the outfit girl all the time. And from a personal perspective, I’m drowning in stuff.”

That “stuff” began to overwhelm her; filling her space, her storage, her mental bandwidth. “I kept buying but never stopped to ask: why?” Then came the 2022 vibe shift. “I started asking a lot of ‘why’ questions. Why am I doing this? Why am I shopping for this? Why, why, why?” Those questions revealed a misalignment between her lifestyle and her values. The precursor to cognitive dissonance.

But she’s not rebranding as a minimalist influencer in some dramatic overcorrection. “I don’t like extremism,” she said. “I like to do things in balance.” She’s currently in a material culling phase—her third year selling her wardrobe. Once the excess is gone, she’ll slowly reintroduce new, thoughtful purchases. “But it will never go back to how it was before. I don’t want to be in that place again. And I don’t see what’s so cute or attractive [about] ‘shopping ’til you drop’ and hoarder-ism.”

Losing Yourself to the Algorithm

Anna’s personal growth fascinated me, but it raised an obvious question: how did this shift affect what she was teaching other women? “The women who join Level Up Class are usually fairly aligned with my views, and that has been great,” she said. “But if you want to go viral, sitting there preaching about balance and intention doesn’t get the clicks.” She laughed. “That was something I had to go through as a content creator. I was definitely a bit of a view chaser back in the day.”

She understood the formula for going viral and recalls getting into a mechanical state of replication. Her videos performed well, but it made her question the content itself. “It’s not that I didn’t mean what I was saying. No. I enjoy elegance. But making hundreds of videos on this topic makes you start resenting the topic itself, even though I love elegance for what it is.” It didn’t fill her up the same way it used to. Burnout and a loss of passion followed. She knew it was time for a break. 

However, taking a break unblocked a deeper flood: long-buried feelings she’d kept at bay through constant output. What emerged was a brutal depression. In a recent video explaining her absence from YouTube, she credited CBT exercises and her therapist with helping her crawl out of the hole. It was, she said, transformative.

When she came back, it was with a different mindset. “I only want to do videos that mean something to me because that is what fills me up with purpose and happiness today. I have been heavily detoxing myself from pleasing the algorithm. Even if it means that I now get fewer views, I have come to a point where I think it’s a good place for me to be because at least I know that I am not back in some of my old habits, where it’s view chasing and sacrificing what you truly are passionate about.”

Despite her growth, she’s cautious about giving herself too much credit. “That’s where I’m at right now, but maybe it’s easy for me to say because I had the viral videos that got millions of views. If I get to do something else now, even if it has lower views, I mean, I already had the experience."

She admits she pigeonholed herself. The success of her viral “elegance” content locked her into a specific role, one that made it hard to explore other ideas or formats she found more fulfilling. “I felt like I had to be the elegance teacher all the time. It stopped me from doing the things I actually wanted to do—heart-to-hearts, interesting conversations, different topics—because I thought that’s what my audience expected from me.”

So she stopped. “I had to take a break from the content that wasn’t fulfilling,” she said. That pause helped her rediscover what she wanted. “What I’m craving is real conversations,” she told me. She hasn’t shared much of that new direction yet, but she’s clear it’s where she’s headed. “I just want to talk about things I’m truly passionate about. Honest conversations about what women go through.”

Right now, her biggest passion is simple: honesty. Reflecting on her YouTube career, she said, “I think one of the reasons why I became very popular is because I always had a bit of a straightforward, no BS type of approach in my content, and I think a lot of people like it.” I told her I had. Her directness was exactly why I subscribed, regardless of whether or not I agreed with her takes. 

She nodded. “Yeah, and I want to continue that. I want to inspire people to be honest with themselves in their daily life.” That’s what she’s trying to do by speaking candidly about her own experience with drifting from and returning to her core self. “Not a lot of people can show or speak publicly about [their experience] chasing status,’” she admits, “but I want to lead with that example because I think everyone should have these conversations with themselves. They are so important.”

Anna Bey’s Fashion Principles

Even as Anna’s content has evolved, her fashion standards have remained core to her message. Though she may be ready to leave style advice behind for now, I couldn’t resist asking before the door fully closed: “What are your timeless principles for dressing elegantly?” Her most essential rule? Read the room. “Everything has a time and place,” she said. One common misconception, she noted, is that elegant dressing means being “boring” or “conservative.” She’s challenging that misconception. “It’s really about time and place, so make sure you’re dressing appropriately for the occasion.”

Another myth: elegance and casual wear are incompatible. “You don’t always have to be dressed up. There are plenty of very elegant, casual clothes,” she said. She thinks the issue is that people associate casual with “the nastiest things they have in their wardrobe,” which, unsurprisingly, she’s against. “I think you can absolutely be comfortable on a plane or on the sofa in something other than just leggings, let’s say.” I chose not to mention that just out of her line of sight, I was wearing exactly that: tacky, millennial-era black leggings. Not even a flare cut. But I never claimed to be the fashion expert here. Thankfully, my line of work deals with words, not garments.

She also emphasized fabric quality. “I do believe very much in good fabrics and not necessarily the most expensive [ones]. I’m actually somebody who can easily wear polyester. There’s a difference between really bad polyester and decent polyester, as an example. But of course, raw materials like linen, cotton, wool, or cashmere will always give you that extra ‘level up’ in your clothes. But that’s a given. That’s a standard.”

So, dress for the occasion, hold standards even when casual, and prioritize quality fabrics. But what instantly cheapens an outfit? What takes a look from chic to vulgar, try-hard, or low-class? “I think we all know—when you’re trying too hard to get validation with your clothes,” she said. “Maybe you’re sexing it up too much, showing more skin than the situation calls for…” She paused, then added gently, “Of course, when you say that, people get upset. They’ll say, ‘Well, I want to do whatever I want.’”

She returned to her point, more measured than in her earlier content. “But like I was saying earlier, you have to read the room. Not everything is suitable for all occasions.” She reminded me that fashion, like all forms of self-expression, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. “We have to coexist with other people. I think showing too much skin—there have to be some boundaries. I don’t want to be too close or too intimate with strangers.”

The Biggest Material Scams

Having first-hand experience in the consumerism rat race, I asked Anna what she now considers the biggest materialist scams people fall for. Her answer came fast: designer handbags. “I do think this designer handbag era is getting out of control,” she said. “It’s now normal for a bag to cost $6,000, $7,000, even $10,000.” She pointed to Chanel bags specifically: “They didn’t use to cost that much. Now they’re the same price as a Birkin. It’s becoming ridiculous because, actually, their quality is not getting any better; it’s getting worse.” 

What bothers her most is the changing target demographic. “It used to be something only rich women would wear, but now we live in times where it’s for anyone. I think a lot of women, let’s say a woman from a working-class background, will feel pressure because if she doesn’t have this designer handbag, then she’s some loser or she’s not worthy or as good as the others” [from society’s point of view]. 

That, she says, is the ultimate scam. “People are taking out loans or bending over backward just to afford these things.” Sure, some buy fakes, but even that signals how intense the pressure is. “Can’t we just be honest about why we’re pushing ourselves to these limits?” she asked.

I then turned the conversation toward relational traps. “For women trying to break into high society through a wealthy partner, are there risks they’re not being warned about?” She didn’t hesitate. These relationships can become transactional fast, she warned, and bad actors may use money as leverage. “You can get locked in. You’re at risk of a power play.” 

“I am very pro finding a high-value man in terms of having a financially stable man or a wealthy man if that’s how you want to look at it, but I do think it’s so important as a woman to make sure that you’re not relying only on his finances." She’s not saying this is inevitable. “This doesn’t mean that all wealthy men are like that and would do that. I think it’s so important that you make sure whatever setup you have, that you are protected,” adding that she vouches for women to be financially independent but doesn’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all formula. 

“I think there are so many women who have a perfectly good life being, let’s say, a trophy wife or stay-at-home wife or mother, so I don’t want to comment on people’s setups.” But her caution is clear: “Just be careful that you’re not stuck in some form of power play position.”

Anna also worries about the lack of nuance in online content, especially around relationships, lifestyle, and status. “I’m starting to think about it more and more, how little nuance is actually presented on the internet.” she said. Unboxings, hauls, dating advice—people start comparing themselves to these hyper-curated lives. She even acknowledged her own early content may have contributed to this. “My advice could also come across like that back in the day; things can come across very black-and-white; you [suddenly] think your husband is not good enough because somebody says something about how it should be."

The internet, she warns, is the Wild West. “Nuance doesn’t get shortlisted into content because it’s not clickbaity enough. It doesn’t fit into a three-minute TikTok. So just keep your mind open and don’t believe everything you see. That’s social media, unfortunately.”

The Dark Side of Content Creation

I wanted to hear more about the dark side of content creation—burnout, depression, feeling boxed in by your niche—and how other content creators or creatives can avoid these pitfalls. “This one has been tricky because I started resenting a topic that I loved and still love. YouTube has this really annoying algorithm where you really have to be niched down, and if you go outside of your niche, you don’t get almost any views, you get low views, and a lot of creators don’t want to take that risk,” she explains. 

“Some creators financially can’t take that risk, and it sucks because we are so multifaceted as human beings.” She describes it as a sort of tragedy because it’s really limiting for both creator and audience, “at the end of the day, I think people subscribe to a creator not just for the knowledge they share, but also for their personality.” The problem, she suggests, is that the algorithm limits what aspects of a creator’s personality they can show, “when you only get to show one side of your personality, you get burned out.”

While she doesn’t claim to have the solution, she does hope that YouTube will make changes to its algorithm to encourage more creative freedom among creators. She thinks this would prevent burnout and increase longevity among successful creators because being pigeonholed is a big contributor to creators throwing in the towel. She can speak from experience, “Though I’ve had a few different labels, I got pigeonholed as the elegance expert, and I don’t want just to be known for that, to be honest.” Though she loves it, it’s not the sum of who she is or all she has to offer. “I feel like I have more to offer, which is what I’m going to focus on now.” 

In terms of navigating the challenges of being a content creator, Anna says therapy has helped her immensely, “Had I not been in therapy, oh my goodness, where would I be?” she pondered. “But it doesn’t solve everything,” she cautioned, “because most of the work you have to do yourself.” She segues back into a previous question about the philosophy and psychology accounts she follows on Instagram, “I’m naturally quite interested in it, so I naturally do a lot of research by myself. I like to read a lot, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I have quite a curious mind.” When she has a problem within herself, she says she likes to seek out as much information as she can to solve the problem. 

While therapy has proven indispensable over the past ten years, when it comes to creator-specific problems, it’s been perhaps less fruitful to seek the guidance of traditional therapy and people with no experience in content creation. “My therapist helps me a lot, but there are some nuances in content creation she can’t fully understand, which can be a bit of a problem when you just need that support.” Instead, she’s found solace in an interesting place: ChatGPT. “It’s super helpful, especially as a content creator, to get some support, like mental health support.”

Reflecting on Communication Style

When asked if she regrets any of her old content or the way she’s communicated certain ideas, she confesses that there’s a side to her that’s quite naive. “I’ve had many years where I never thought about how I communicated, and I just took for granted that people were going to understand because I’m used to certain jargon, a certain tone, I’m quite expressive, I’m quite straight to the point, but I never realized that not everybody operates like me.” 

She laughed, “I know it’s so basic, but sometimes something so simple can take you so long to understand.” Eventually, she became aware of the gap between how she intended to come across and how others perceived her, “I started thinking about it and rewatching some of my [old] stuff, and I’m like okay, I totally get why some people think I am this, I don’t know, gold digger, or b-word, or whatever, because sometimes when I speak about sensitive topics, I just say it how it is, no filter, and it can come across very harsh or critical.” 

Though she’s become more self-conscious about how her intentions can get lost in translation by people with different communication styles, she’s of two minds about it. “To a certain degree, I think I should just be able to have my communication style, but because I’m naturally always focused on how I can improve things, not [to the extent] of people-pleasing, but I like to refine things that are holding me back.” 

If clarity is something she can improve through minor tweaks, why not, she reasons. “If I can’t communicate clearly to people because I am repeating certain bad habits, then why not just try to improve that bad habit?” That said, she draws a line. She’s not trying to become someone else. “Not saying I’m going to completely remove the way I speak or become a completely different person now. So that’s kind of my approach in terms of self-betterment.”

As for regrets, she’s clear: she doesn’t regret what she’s said, even if her views have changed. “We have the right to change our opinion; there’s nothing weird about that. It’s actually weird if you don’t change your opinions.” What she sometimes does regret is the delivery. Despite perhaps cringing at some past, confident deliveries that lacked nuance, she remains resilient, “I don’t think it’s a big deal; we all make mistakes.”

Bargaining With Hustle Culture

I asked Anna about her experience getting caught up in and eventually stepping back from hustle culture. “Yeah, I’ve expressed in my content how I have been operating on autopilot in many chapters—everything from luxury to high society to becoming a boss babe,” she said. “Look at our culture. We’re very much fed hustle culture. It’s glorified to be a boss babe, or an entrepreneur, or have your own startup. That is what success means today.” Anna admits, “I definitely didn’t question that at first, I just got sucked into it like many people.”

Eventually, she paused to ask herself: What does success actually look like to me? And the answer surprised her. Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to run some big company with hundreds of employees. She got a taste of it and didn’t enjoy it. At one point, she had a team of ten. “Which might sound small compared to others, but for me? It was too much. I found managing people exhausting. I just love being creative.”

Since scaling down, she’s much happier. She now runs a streamlined business with one employee and a few freelancers. “I’m fine with making less money,” she tells me. People think a bigger business equals more money, but they forget it means more expenses, too. She decided it wasn’t worth the stress.

The pressure of managing a team, running her YouTube channel, handling her online courses, and launching a clothing brand that didn’t pan out took a serious toll. The stress triggered health issues, including thyroid disease, which only went into remission after she pulled back and simplified her life.

Looking Forward to the Future

When Anna returned from her YouTube break, she dropped a quiet bombshell: she’s considering retiring from the platform. But don’t mourn the end of an era just yet. “I’m not saying I’ve decided that it will happen in X amount of time or years. Of course, I’m open to that idea. I think everybody will retire at some point."

But right now, she has unfinished business. “I just want to have some other conversations now that I haven’t had a chance to have with my audience; things that I have gone through, things that I feel are really important for me to share.” Once that’s done, she says, she might be ready to step away. But other passions are calling, too. “I would also really like to develop some form of charity work because I’m very passionate about it. I really want to do something for animals, and I feel like I haven’t really gotten a chance to do that yet.” 

For now, her focus remains on helping women. “Hopefully, one day I can do both, or maybe just focus on helping animals. I don’t know yet, but that’s what I would like to do."

You can find Anna on YouTube, either on her main channel, Anna Bey, or her cozier, more personal second channel, Anna Bey’s Living Room. She also offers a selection of online courses on her website, including her flagship Level Up class.