6 Signs You're Ready To Take The Next Step In Your Career

> Written by Jaimee Trio - Owner of 5 award-winning Salons

As a solo lash artist, brow artist or salon owner, there are a number of ways to grow. Hire staff, move into a bigger location, open another location, add on more services, offer an incredible range of products for sale - AND, if you have a lot of experience in certain beauty treatments, become a beauty trainer. Or, you could do all of the above… like I did.

Side note: It's my personal opinion that opening your own line of professional beauty products (lashes, glue etc.) is not the best way to grow. I do not say this from a desire to keep down competition, but from a genuine place of wanting you to succeed (I made a line of beauty products). Formulation of products, lab work, labelling, shipping and freight, customs and imports is a completely different activity than running a salon. The end consumer is a completely different group of people than the ones you have on your database, namely your lash clients. It would be potentially foolish to branch off into a completely different activity and not leverage off what you’ve already worked hard to build up.

Coming up with a line of beauty products that would be of interest to your existing clientele could be a good idea, but again the time spent to formulate that would be extensive. White labelling could be a good option for you, or as said above, researching out and offering an incredible range of things that already exists.

These are some of the signs that you’re ready (or maybe not fully ready- but do need to step up) to the next level and possibly become a trainer.

1. You are finding yourself sometimes distracted by the competition in your area and may be sometimes feeling jealous of other salons/artists;
2. You have been annoyed at the quality of lash or brow work coming from another salon and know you can help the lash/brow artist who to become better at what they do, (vs. b!tching about it on socials);
3. You have had friends, clients, family and random strangers mention that they might like to learn lashes, and maybe you could teach them;
4. You want to hire staff but have found that the quality of work done by potential employees is okay, but is going to need to some perfecting by you to bring them up to your standard;
5. You find yourself wanting to help solve other lash and brow artist issues in forums and you get a buzz out of helping them out and building them up.

Let me explain why (especially why #1) are possible signs it is time for you to step up.

This blog comes from a place of honesty. I started off in the lash industry over 10 years ago and took the plunge with a business partner to open a high street salon right away. I had some business experience, I had no background in beauty and I learned lashes for the opening. My first ever client was probably the 5th set of lashes I had ever done. 

I don’t think I would have even considered doing this by myself; let alone gone ahead if I wasn’t doing it with someone who had the ability to be successful, I trusted implicitly. I knew my business partner’s drive would make up for any self-doubts I was experiencing.

I learned something about myself. I discovered that I didn’t need to know how to handle every problem I would run into, I didn’t even have to try and think about what problems and barriers I would hit. I learned that I could, even if some were super hard and stressful, solve problems that came my way.

I may not have solved every problem the best way, and I learned from those mistakes - but that was one of the problems I hit, making mistakes. I learned to solve self-generated problems too. 

I have experienced all 5 of the above signs.

I hit a point where I started finding myself kinda’ not wanting others to be that successful in this industry, as another’s success felt like a threat to my success. I knew this was not true and it was not a healthy place for me to be. It’s probably one of the weirdest problems I hit.

My solution was to become a trainer and help others and contribute back to the industry. In the long run, it’s made me a healthier person mentally. As a salon owner, when one of my staff want to go and open their own salon, I’m excited for them. I love helping them with it. I still have my salons (5 locations with 45 staff) and LOVE every minute I do with the salons. But life is significantly more fulfilling since I became a trainer as well.

As always we are here for you and to help you succeed. Reach out any time with any problem you would like to bounce off someone. 

THINK YOU’RE READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN YOUR BEAUTY CAREER?

Becoming a Beauty Trainer could be for you!