[00:00:00] Hi everyone, welcome back to the Artist to Artist podcast. This is the first episode of 2025. Happy New Year. Today I am focusing on something a little different. This is going to be probably one of the more personal episodes you are going to hear from me.
I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned in 2024, not just as a makeup artist, but as a human being navigating a very difficult year. Before we get into that, there's some housekeeping that I wanted to do. If you are a student of mine, and either My hygiene course, color theory course, if you purchase any courses from me and you have not logged in or started completing them yet, what are you waiting for?
I just want to remind you to do that. The content that is included in my courses, the amount of support that you get from me when you enroll is Pretty much unmatched. So if you are sitting there and not taking advantage of your investment You're really just wasting money and I put a lot of time and effort into these courses For you to learn from them for you to get the [00:01:00] information that is actually going to make a difference in your career When you complete my courses Any of them really you're going to be feeling way more confident So if you're looking to really go after things this year when you invest in courses and trainings and things like that Complete them watch the content ask questions.
That's what you've paid for. So just a reminder to do that
Also, if you're listening and you are a makeup artist that said to yourself, this is the year you're going to put yourself out there on social. I think social media is something that is a necessity if you want to market yourself, but you're not sure how to do it.
I will include a link to a new template that I have created for you. It's a year's worth of content. You can purchase the content calendar from me. It's for Instagram. It is going to give you prompts for three posts a week, and there's a little more to it than what I'm going to explain, so I don't want to take up.
Most of the episode explaining this and I will link to it in the show notes, but three prompts a week for three posts No posting on the weekends. And when you purchase this content calendar You're gonna get access to a content calendar that I created for freelancers like [00:02:00] myself and also for bridal makeup artists because bridal makeup takes specific marketing.
These content calendars are tailored to makeup artists to build their social. This is not to become an influencer, to go viral. This is just to build your social media to help attract the clients that you want to attract. It's under 30. It's very affordable. I was hoping to get this out earlier in December, but unfortunately life had other plans for me and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
I will link you to it in the show notes. It's a year of content. If you don't know what to post, if you don't even know where to start, this is the thing for you. This content calendar is really going to help prepare you to make full use of social media for your business. Okay, so that's everything for now. And if you have any questions about anything, you know where to find me. If you're a student, log in.
You can ask me questions there. You know where to find my social media as well. Let's get back to this episode. 2024 tested me in ways I could not have imagined. Between losing a major client at the end of 2023, balancing my career with [00:03:00] personal challenges, and I lost my dad just a couple weeks ago in December.
It was a year for me that required resilience, adaptability, and I had to do a lot of self reflection. I have made a very conscious effort to keep my personal life separate from social media, and this is by design, and I have talked about this many times during our Q& As every week. For me, work has always been a way to step away from from the chaos of life, even if it's just for a little while.
I see social media as work and I don't like to intertwine my work life and my personal life. Some of you, well most of you, will probably not know the extent of what's been going on with me, but today I'm going to share a little bit more because I think these experiences have not only affected who I am, but also how I view this career.
And I think A lot of the things I learned in 2024 and many years prior, because it's been a few years of a lot of ups and downs for me. The lessons I have learned have been very [00:04:00] valuable. They have really helped me in my career in a lot of ways, and of course I want to pass those on to you so you hopefully can learn from some of the things that I've learned from.
We all are going to go through difficult times, but it's very hard to navigate this career when personal stuff is going on because, you know, there's not a lot of people that you can turn to sometimes and you are responsible for your success. So that's why I wanted to talk about some of the lessons I walked away from 2024 with.
I have mentioned this on previous podcasts and just on the Q& As. At the end of 2023, I lost a client that I had worked with for a decade. This client essentially paid my rent every month for the better part of 10 years, so losing them was a huge adjustment. So I was already starting 2024 at a loss, let's say.
On top of that, I think it was 2023, the timelines I'm not great with. My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and colon cancer. He passed [00:05:00] away just this past December, after a month in hospice. My mom is also dealing with some long term effects from chemo, so she needs care as well. This year and years prior to this has been a constant balancing act.
I spent a lot of last year processing, I guess, the reality that I was going to be losing my dad. I wanted to make sure my parents were taken care of with whatever they needed. Not necessarily financially, but just being a good support system. I was trying to make sure my brother is okay. My brother had a daughter this year, my niece, so there was that element
I was also trying to keep my career afloat and I decided to really focus on education for a number of reasons, I was starting over in so many different ways. So 2024 was a lot.
One lesson that has come up again and again for me, and I think something That is so [00:06:00] important to remember and this is why I wanted to start the podcast with this If you want to do this job, you have to love all of it Not just the quote unquote perks of being a makeup artist Success in this industry is not guaranteed.
Nobody owes you anything not your clients not the industry And I think a lot of people say this but it is really true. You are responsible for your own success Just because you think you deserve to be in a certain place in your career doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. You really have to work hard. You have to love the challenge of the ups and downs of this job.
Losing clients, finding new ones, pivoting if you need to, starting over when you need to. Because it's going to happen time and time again throughout your career. I've had so many ups and downs in the last, I don't know, 15 20 years. From going from part time to full time, to losing clients, to pivoting, to doing more social, to not being on social, to being back on social, like there's just so many things that are gonna happen to you in your [00:07:00] career the longer it is.
When I was younger in this profession, I always felt like, oh, I, you know, I deserve this, or I've done my time, or you know, I've done assisting, I've done a lot of free work. Why am I not getting paid jobs? And then when I was getting paid jobs, it was like, how come I'm not making more money? Well that is entirely up to you if you're going to be doing this.
You are the person that has to get yourself out there, make the relationships, create and build, a good reputation for yourself. And there's also actually doing the job, like the hard skills that go along with working as a makeup artist. Dealing with difficult people, marketing yourself, social media, like all of this goes into being a makeup artist.
Not all of us are going to have celebrity clients or these viral moments on Instagram, not that. I'm saying all of us want them, I personally don't, most of us our career is going to be very average, we're not going to be aligned with celebrities, we're not going to be flying here and there.
This career is just going to look like showing up, doing great work, doing your best, and doing work with people you like, and that really has [00:08:00] to be enough for you.
That is the first lesson and I didn't just learn this in 2024, it's just a theme that constantly comes up and I say this especially to people who I run into or younger makeup artists who ask for advice and they're like, what's one thing you would say about working as a makeup artist or what's one piece of advice you could give?
And I always say you have to love the entirety of the job, the difficult stuff, the stuff that's very, can feel very defeating, the stuff that can feel very overwhelming. You have to love feeling defeated and coming back and picking yourself up as well as all the great stuff and all the good times you're going to have on set and all the beautiful work you're going to do and.
all of that. You have to love everything about this. The next thing that 2024 reminded me, and this is something I learned very quickly, and also watching my parents Get sick and, and be sick over the last couple of years, , first my mom, then my dad. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything, really.
This job is physically demanding [00:09:00] and your health is going to be your foundation for everything. And when I say health, I mean mental and physical health. It's physically taxing, mentally taxing, and if you're not taking care of yourself, the career choice is going to be very challenging for you and you will not last. And last year reminded me again. Mental and physical health are non negotiable. I've been in therapy. I continue to go to therapy. I stay physically active, I make time for these things even when it feels impossible because I know this is what is going to help me feel confident, feel stable, feel resilient.
This is what allows me to keep showing up for my clients regardless of what's going on in my personal life because if you have challenging things going on and you also feel like shit, it's going to be very hard for you to show up and do your best.
These jobs will break you. Somebody will say something to you if you're not mentally okay, or you're just overworked and tired because you're not taking care of your health. Somebody will say something that will derail you for a couple days, or maybe a couple months, Depending on what state your mental health is in and you just [00:10:00] can't have that because it's you that's responsible for showing up every Day, we can't call in sick.
If we call in sick, there's no money coming in I don't have the liberty of turning down jobs I'm not in a place financially where I can do that if I have a bad week and I can't work That's a week's worth of earnings that I need that are just completely gone out the window I had days in 2024 where I would wake up early, go do a 10 hour job, go visit my dad in hospice, go see my mom who is dealing with her own health challenges, and then come back and have to wash brushes and reset and show up the next day with a smile on my face making sure I'm safe.
I'm still delivering what I need to deliver for my clients because some of these jobs are, half my rent for the month or groceries or whatever it is, I'm not in a position to turn down work and a lot of us are not going to be in that position. But if you're unhealthy physically and mentally, this job sucks.
It's going to be so hard for you to do what you need to do to build a longterm career where eventually you're going to be more financially successful [00:11:00] and more stable.
The saying health is wealth, that is definitely true, especially in this job where it's physical and mental, it's not just what's in our kit and the looks and the before and afters, there's a lot more to it.
I think something that I have known, again, for a while, but was very clear in 2024 is that, The relationships that you build in this network are everything to your career. I'm at a point now where some of my clients I have been with for over 10 years, I have developed relationships that are amazing with a lot of my clients and that has served me so well.
I have found people that I enjoy working with, that we are aligned in terms of what we want to achieve. And those relationships have not only helped me financially, helped me with my portfolio and all of that, but there's a personal side to them as well.
The day my dad passed away, I was actually on a job for Velour Lashes. I feel like me and Velour are trauma bonded now. I've gone through so much. With [00:12:00] them, there's been so many times where I have gone on a campaign with them, or I have been working with them for something, and there has just been crazy stuff going on in my personal life with the health of my parents.
And what I'm talking about in this episode is really just scratching the surface. I don't want to get into it too much, but they know me pretty well. And, um, thankfully I was with them on that day because it just made a terrible day. A little less terrible. So shout out to Steven and Sophia. They're probably not listening to this, but they were just the perfect people to be there for me on that day.
So supportive, very understanding. We kind of continued on with the day because I didn't know what to do. I didn't stay very long, obviously. The other thing that happened, , my best friend Ashley Reddings, amazing hair and makeup artist, , I called her, Stephen had called her as well to come in for me and she came in and took over the job without hesitating.
She was there as fast as she could be. And , the Velour team and Ashley just really took care of me and everything on that day so I could go and be with my family. These are things, now obviously [00:13:00] I hope those of you listening don't have to go through this, but there are other things that are going to be difficult and challenging and you're going to have times where you're on the job and really sad stuff or upsetting setting things are going to be happening in your personal life.
And it's about being around people that you can trust to support you a little bit when you're on the job, especially when life gets hard. So a network of supportive colleagues like this and friends can really make all the difference, not just for your career, but for your mental health as well. And building relationships is what this is all about, really. It's not just for personal connections, because when you look at it, the type of work that we do, we spend a lot of time on set with people, you're probably going to see certain people on set more than you see your own family, those connections do have to be good to make things just more enjoyable in life, we don't really have a regular full time job where you're doing the 9 to 5 thing and everybody kind of knows a little bit about everyone else and if you're having a bad day you can talk to someone in your office about it or your friend at work.
We don't get that. Having those supportive [00:14:00] colleagues or friends in the industry or whatever it is, that's what this is all about. And as you're networking and you're doing creatives and you're getting to know people in your industry, pay attention to the people that you vibe with, that are as motivated as you are, that are supportive, that, , are understanding when you show up and maybe you're having an off day or a bad day.
These are the people that you need to populate your network with, so you can be successful and feel supported and not feel like an island in this industry. It's very important. So again, thank you to Steven and Sophia. Um, we are trauma bonded for sure after that day.
It would have been way worse if I was somewhere else
all right lesson number four. I think that's number four You have to define success in this industry for yourself. It's easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to others, what type of clients other people have, watching people on social media, how many followers they have, how glamorous their careers look. At the end of the day, success is personal, and this is something I was reminded of last year. I accomplished a [00:15:00] lot, especially considering what was going on in my personal life. For me, last year was definitely not my most successful year financially, but where I had success was staying employed, doing what I love at a time when work in Toronto is definitely declining. Was I profitable enough to support myself and to have a little bit of extra money to put into Artist2Artist? Yes, so that is success to me. Do I want to make more money? Absolutely, and I think we should all be proud to say we want to make more money.
But, This year I realized I have built a career for myself that is fulfilling, I feel supported, it's sustainable, and that for me is successful. Am I working with celebrities? No. Do I want to do that? Not really. Do I have a million followers? No. Am I getting pr boxes every day delivered to my house? No, would I love that? Yes. Am I hoping that will change in 2025? Yes, absolutely But that's not the make or break for me. Looking back on this year It was hard but a lot of the work [00:16:00] that I put in on some of the things that are not so obvious have been very successful in those things, my relationships, the fact that I can stay employed, the fact that I can start to pivot my business and not be strapped for cash, it really comes down to building a career that's fulfilling for you and not for anybody else. When I look back on 2024, It has been one of the most challenging years of my life. I've had a string of challenging years I would probably say the last seven or eight has been very tough You're getting a glimpse of kind of what I was dealing with during that time.
That's not the whole picture But it's also been a big year of growth for me I have seen a lot of I guess payback from the time and effort I've put into my networking and just my hard skills doing actual makeup Working on my social media some of that is coming to fruition or came to fruition in 2024 Hopefully more in 2025.
I have learned really what I am capable of what's required to succeed in this industry I [00:17:00] know what it is, but I was just reminded of that in 2024 And I know what really matters at the end of the day, and that's what I'm trying to pass on to you. It's not about the products in your kit, the number of followers you have.
It's about the caliber of people that you surround yourself with, the relationships you build, and your ability to keep showing up for yourself, even when things feel really hard and impossible. It was feeling like that for me last year. If you take one thing away from this episode, it has to be that you have to fight for yourself, fight for your success in your career, build the career that works for you, and also remember that you're not alone in all of this.
All of us have stuff that we're dealing with. People make it seem like this career is very easy. I know What you see from my social may appear that way, but I can promise you it's not. Part of this episode as well is to let you in a little bit on my personal life and kind of what I've been dealing with, what I've been putting into my career, the pictures you see on my personal Instagram, the stuff that you see of me on set, the artist to [00:18:00] artist stuff.
All of this is happening while I'm going through a lot of really challenging times.
And this is why I say you really have to love this job, because this job is a lot, and life is a lot, and when the two come together, which inevitably they're going to, and you are going to have difficult times, and you are going to have a lot of ups and downs, and the industry is going to change, nothing is constant.
I hope you will remember or come back to this episode, and I hope these lessons really resonate with you. So that's everything for this week. If you have any questions for me, you know where to find me. And I will talk to you on the next episode.
Bye.
