Mia Moohan Is Always Planning Her Next Escape

Written and Interviewed by Charlotte Lewis

From fan pages and a law degree to full-time freelancing, Scottish creator Mia Moohan is building a career around social media, spontaneous adventures and a seemingly endless list of places to see.

For Mia Moohan, a holiday is rarely just a holiday. It is an excuse to eat something new, get lost somewhere unfamiliar and meet people whose lives look nothing like her own. Ideally, it is somewhere she has been talking about visiting for years, somewhere slightly off the beaten track, and somewhere she can convince everyone around her to come along for the ride.

“I literally live to go away,” she tells me. “I just love going to new places.”

Based in Glasgow, Mia has built a career around social media marketing and content creation, balancing client work with her own growing interest in travel and lifestyle content. Her itinerary videos offer an alternative to the familiar travel circuit, drawing attention to destinations that might not immediately spring to mind when planning a trip. Most recently, she has been exploring the Balkans, a region she had wanted to visit for years before finally convincing her boyfriend that it was time to make it happen.

The trip was worth the wait. Planning it, however, was another story.

“It's not overly touristy yet,” she explains.

Getting between destinations proved difficult, with flights and transport making it harder to map out the trip than a more established holiday destination. But perhaps that is part of the appeal. In a world where travel content can make every corner of the planet feel like a recycled Pinterest board, there is something refreshing about wanting to go somewhere simply because you have never been before.

Mia's enthusiasm for the Balkans comes with a familiar sense of vindication. She had been talking about a Balkan summer long before the idea started gaining traction online, and she is convinced the region is about to become a much bigger destination.

“Next year, 100%, it's going to be huge,” she says.

If her travel plans are anything to go by, she will probably already be somewhere else by then.

Mia's relationship with social media started long before it became her career. While other ten-year-olds were getting to grips with the internet, she was building fan pages dedicated to British YouTubers, including Zoella, and Ariana Grande. Some amassed thousands of followers, with Mia creating graphics and videos alongside her schoolwork.

“I would do all my homework for school and then I would be like, right, need to lock-in on the fan page.”

What might have seemed like an internet obsession at the time was, in retrospect, an early education in online communities, audience engagement and visual communication. The fan pages were not just something to fill her spare time; she was already treating them like a business.

Despite her creative instincts, Mia was also academically driven. She went on to study Law and Politics at the University of Glasgow, a degree that gave her the option of pursuing a more conventional career. But an internship at a social media agency during her second year helped her recognise that the work she had been doing for fun could become something more.

After graduating, she travelled for four months while continuing to work with her clients. She briefly considered graduate jobs, but the prospect of following the same route as her friends studying law never quite felt right. Instead, she decided to commit to freelancing full-time in April.

Now, her working week is anything but predictable. She can spend several days on shoots before returning home to edit, manage client accounts and respond to new enquiries. A quiet day can quickly turn into an evening of unexpected work, and the flexibility that allows her to travel also means learning how to manage a business around the clock.

“I love my job,” she says, although she admits switching off is easier said than done.

The freedom to choose her own clients is a major part of what makes freelancing work for her. She enjoys building close relationships with the brands she works with, rather than being assigned accounts by an agency. Having grown up around self-employed family members, working for herself was never as daunting a prospect as it might be for someone else.

For Mia, independence is not about avoiding hard work. It is about having the autonomy to decide what that work looks like.

Travel is the thread running through much of Mia's life, but her interest goes beyond collecting destinations. She wants to try new food, meet people and learn about cultures different from her own. Her travel wish list includes Pakistan, particularly for its mountains and food, and she speaks about the country with the excitement of someone already mentally planning the trip.

That curiosity also shapes how she sees home. Mia grew up in Clydebank, near Glasgow, and says travelling makes her unexpectedly patriotic.

“When I'm here I'm like, this is shite, it's freezing, I've got the cold,” she laughs. “But when I go away, if I meet somebody else, I'm like, Scotland, Scotland! You need to come to Scotland.”

It is a familiar contradiction for anyone who has left home and found themselves defending it to strangers. Glasgow's weather might be enough to send her searching for the next flight, but distance seems to make its appeal clearer. She believes Scottish friendliness gives creators from the area an advantage, particularly when travelling somewhere unfamiliar.

She points to Scottish creator @skalleyssed, whose videos document his experiences in Japan, as an example of someone bringing their personality and sense of humour into a different cultural setting. Rather than smoothing out the quirks that make someone recognisable, this kind of content allows them to become part of the story.

For Mia, travel is about being open to other people and the places they call home. It is not simply about finding somewhere photogenic enough to post.

Despite her growing interest in travel, Mia remains closely connected to the creative community in Scotland. She is optimistic about Glasgow's cultural scene, pointing to events such as the Stüssy Archive visit as evidence that the city continues to attract exciting names and experiences. At the same time, she recognises that opportunities for emerging creatives are not always easy to find.

“I don't think there's lots of marketing jobs,” she says. “You kind of need to make the opportunities for yourself.”

It is a familiar problem for young people entering creative industries: employers want experience, but gaining that experience can be difficult without being given the chance in the first place. Social media and content creation are increasingly competitive fields, and Mia acknowledges that the industry can feel oversaturated.

Still, she believes Glasgow has something distinctive to offer. It might not operate on the same scale as London, but that does not mean its creative community needs to replicate what happens elsewhere.

“We do our own thing.”

Her own career is an example of what that can look like. Rather than waiting for a graduate job to open the right door, Mia has built relationships with clients, developed her own platform and created a working life that allows her to pursue her interests on her own terms.

She also has a particular view on what brands should be looking for when working with creators. Follower counts might look impressive on a presentation, but a large audience does not automatically translate into meaningful engagement. A smaller creator with a loyal following and a clear niche can be far more effective than a recognisable name whose audience has little connection to the product being promoted.

It is a point worth remembering in an industry that often mistakes visibility for influence.

Mia's own combination of marketing experience, legal knowledge and personal content creation gives her a broader understanding of the space. She has also published an academic article examining advertising regulation in influencer marketing, bringing her law degree into a field she has been part of since childhood. Looking ahead, she is interested in becoming more of a strategic voice for brands, offering advice on creator marketing rather than focusing solely on producing posts.

Ask Mia where she sees herself in five years and you will not get a carefully rehearsed career plan. She is happy with where she is, still finding her feet as a full-time freelancer and more interested in seeing the world than chasing a particular salary or job title.

“If I'd visited a lot more countries by 27, the next five years, then that's how I know I'd be rich,” she says.

It is an unconventional measure of success, but perhaps a more honest one than the usual milestones of promotions, titles and five-year plans. For Mia, a successful career is one that makes the rest of her life possible, leaving room for curiosity, new experiences and the freedom to change direction.

Her ideal day in Glasgow is relatively straightforward: a morning in a spa, an oat milk matcha, some good sushi, a wander around charity shops and, inevitably, planning her next trip. It is not an elaborate vision, but it captures the balance she seems to be searching for: enjoying where she is while always having somewhere else in mind.

Mia is still at the beginning of her freelance career, and she is refreshingly open about not having everything figured out. Her ambitions are less about building an empire than creating a life that feels like her own. In an online world that increasingly turns every hobby into a side hustle and every trip into a performance, there is something appealing about that.

For now, she is working, travelling and keeping an eye on the next place she wants to discover. Pakistan is on the list. So are countless others.

And if you ask her where she wants to go next, the answer is probably going to be yes.