From side hustle to 56 million views: The rise of 'Abrielle Says'

Abrielle Herb props up her iPhone, glances down at her Apple Watch and begins braiding. Her fingers moving deftly behind her head.

On screen, it looks effortless. In reality, it's a carefully choreographed setup. She connects her watch to her phone so she can check framing, making sure every twist is centered before she hits record. Sometimes she'll redo a style a few times before landing on the version her audience sees.

The result?

An elegant bun tutorial that's racked up 56 million views , and a global following that stretches from Music City to Brazil to Italy.

"My hair tutorials are what really grew my entire audience, like nearly almost overnight," she says. "I went viral and going viral can be weird. People don't talk about it enough. It's almost like achieving an insane level of reach overnight."

But @AbrielleSays didn't begin as a viral brand. It started as a hobby in 2014.

Blonde beauty with Arizona roots

Herb's love for hair started early.

"I wanted to be a hairstylist since I was 3 years old," she says, recalling how she would spend hours before elementary school experimenting with different looks.

In high school, she styled friends' hair for proms.

She later attended Arizona State University, earning a degree in communication from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. After graduation, she landed a job at iHeartMedia in Phoenix, Ariz. and later transitioned into broadcast television and public relations, managing social media accounts for clients while quietly building something of her own on the side.

"I'd be working like 13-hour days and then at night, my hobby was kind of like, I started Abrielle Says ," Herb explains over the phone.

Those nights often stretched until 2 a.m., editing makeup tutorials and hair videos after clocking out of her 9-to-5 job.

"I knew I wanted to do this blog," she says.

Sitting in the radio studio one day, she started thinking about how much her job revolved around speaking. She loved beauty, hair and lifestyle content, but she was also hosting sports talk and news radio. That sparked an idea: what if she created a brand flexible enough to grow with her interests? "Abrielle Says" could expand into sports, beauty or wherever her career led.

"It was a play on speaking and that's where it's rooted from," she says. "And then I just, I've kept it all these years."

In 2022, she and her husband, Tyler, packed up and moved to Nashville after he signed to pitch in the Milwaukee Brewers organization, playing for the Nashville Sounds.

"I love the whole atmosphere," the Scottsdale, Ariz. native says. "There's always live music. The fact you can be in the airport and there's live country music, that is like my dream."

Now, more than a decade after launching her blog, Herb is ready to make it her primary focus.

"I'm really aiming to like be full, full-time this year," she says.

Bryan West is a music reporter at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on  Instagram ,  TikTok  and  X as @BryanWestTV .

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: From side hustle to 56 million views: The rise of 'Abrielle Says'