*Collaborative post.
If you’ve spent so much time turning your spare room into a home office, you might have thought about how you can capitalise on this. If you have a love for all things beauty and fashion, and you’ve grown frustrated with your current job, or you are worried that the economy is going to result in redundancy for you, you may want to start thinking about what it takes to turn your love of beauty into a business. Also, if you don’t enjoy your job, now is the time to take control of your life. What does it take?
Look at Transferable Skills
Many people look at starting all over again as an opportunity to retrain. While in beauty, you can partake in aesthetics training and get relevant qualifications, you should not underestimate your transferable skills. If you are particularly good at doing your own makeup, is this something that you can transfer into another business venture? Some people need professional makeup artists, such as models or musicians, and when you start to gather some specific looks and styles, this is the best way to bring a portfolio together. It is so important to look at the transferable skills you already have, not just in terms of your love beauty, but also your skills learnt in other areas.
Start Small, but Manageable
The important thing to remember when you are turning your love of beauty into a business is that you can overreach. It is important to learn that building up the business is about acquiring knowledge in a certain area, while also making sure that you are able to scale up the business in a manageable fashion. This is why it’s a good idea to start your business venture by doing something little, for example, a blog that incorporates affiliate marketing. When we start small, we have complete control over our product, and this is where we learn the most important lessons in running businesses. Because a business is not just about the product or the promotion, but it’s about the customer service. When we start to think about what customers need, we can have a solid grip on what our business should be, what it offers, and how we can promote ourselves.
It’s Who You Know!
Turning your love of beauty into a business is about making sure that you have the right clientele. You can be in a chicken and egg situation: making sure that you know that you’ve got the right customers or being 100% sure of your own image, but you need to be both. When it comes to bolstering your business, one of the most important ways to get yourself out there is to network. In terms of fashion and beauty, there are so many fashion and beauty bloggers out there, but also realising that you can network online, as well as in the real world. It is vital to learn how to network effectively, such as by demonstrating soft skills, but also not being pushy.
When people go to networking events, the truth of the matter is that everybody has a product to push, but this means you’ve got to come across as approachable without being pushy. Focus on building friendships first, and this works to help you find the people that will want to work with you but also it will help you find the people that you actually want to work with. Sometimes, we can scramble for customers and clients, but sometimes if they don’t align with our way of thinking, this can cause more problems than it’s worth.
Do Not Stand in the Way of Yourself
Running any form of business can be about finding the right time to make the leap from normal working life to unknown territory. It is usually ourselves that will stop us from taking a leap of faith. This usually involves doubt or some form of anxiety. And it’s a lot better to keep things as they are but we will never know what we can achieve if we do not make the leap. When the chance comes, we have to take it. And when it comes to doing something that you love and you have a passion for, you have to remember that you are the biggest obstacle.
Sometimes we think that we’ve got to do sufficient preparation to take the leap, when we have a passion for something, turning this love of beauty and fashion into a business immediately translates to enthusiasm. Sometimes people picture themselves having more freedom, being more creative, and it’s important to pay the bills but it is just as important to turn something you love into a livelihood.