Over my 25+ years in the industry, I’ve been asked what it takes to be successful.
This is the list I’ve compiled over those years and I hope it helps you:
Enjoy interacting with people (mostly women and probably the most important of all the advice I can give).
If you love to make people feel better about themselves and adding value to other people's lives, then read on.
Physical Capacity: Does your vision allow you to see up close?
You must be able to see up close. My near vision isn't the best, so I wear glasses and additionally an optivisor magnified times three.
As long as you can see clearly using magnifiers and proper lighting, you can do this.
Must-Have: A steady hand
A little bit of nerves, in the beginning, is normal, but can you draw a straight line?
Having a steady hand is important to create even, natural-looking shades and lines.
Do your hobbies include learning and spending time creating art?
Applying permanent cosmetics is another form of creativity.
If you enjoy sitting and creating detailed work such as eyelash extensions, nails, tattooing, beading, painting, and drawing for extended periods of time it's worth considering this field of work.
Do you have patience and understanding? Now earlier, we asked if you enjoyed interacting with people, but can you take a step back and give someone the exact look they’re looking for?
Permanent Cosmetics is an art and art as we know is typically in the eye of the beholder.
It’s important to understand the single most important person your art has to appeal to: Your client.
The key to a successful career in permanent cosmetics is the ability to listen to your client, understand what she wants to accomplish and make sure that she understands what would be best in her interest based on your professional opinion.
Practice, practice and more practice. This art form takes practice, practice and more practice.
Every single face is different. The practice of developing skills for those differences requires two things: Experience and practice.
Remember, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first. If I could only share with you my very first eyebrows back in 1987. I'm positive I threw away those pictures years ago. The advice I received back then was, "Always let the client draw on her own eyebrows, she knows what's best for her". WRONG! Back then there was nowhere to get training. That poor woman…and poor me.
I learned from the school of hard knocks. Today, you don't have to if you have the proper training.
Why Microblade? The popularity of permanent cosmetics has been steadily climbing over the past two decades, until about five or six years ago when microblading came on the scene.
Social media exploded with microbladed brows, nano brows, hair stroke brows, feathered brows, and embroidery eyebrows.
Pictures blew up the internet with all kinds of eyebrows, along with new daily wear techniques of brow application.
In fact, so much attention has been placed on brows, there are spoofs and hilarious videos depicting “everything brows”. And rightly so. Our perspective of what brows are supposed to be on the face has become partially or completely skewed.
Success requires hard work. This goes along with, practice, practice and more practice.
Are you willing to go with the ebb and flow, the ups and downs of being in the service business? As with all businesses, especially the service industry, trust and reputation are what will get you through the slower times to a lifelong career that is rewarding, lucrative and very very fun.
Get the best beginner training you can find, and when you feel your skills have reached a plateau, hunger for more and search out more training.
Because most states have very little, if any oversight at all, this is where you must research out who and where you will get your fundamental, beginner training.
Washington requires you to buy your “Professional" license in order to take basic training.
It's a very political topic, and when this rule was put into place, it was supposed to keep people from taking the 3-day microblade classes, but because all that is required to get your professional license is a check for $250.00, it stops no one.
And to teach this, Washington State requires zero-knowledge, experience or skill. And WA is one of a handful of states that regulate us. So, to reiterate, do your research before putting down a chunk of your savings to permanently ink people’s faces. A great education is expensive but poor education costs far more.
This is a huge world of innovative creative, beautiful art. Evolving and ever-changing. Learn, learn, learn! You can never learn less than you know right now!