I’ve raised this topic before on my instagram and I know it is going to be a little bit controversial, but my belief is, if you:

• want to be a great business owner

• want to have a big, successful salon

• want to employ staff

• want people to be making money for you

• want to put down the tools

• don’t want to be in your salon 5, 6, 7 days a week seeing clients

• want to spend time with your friends and your family

• want to spend more time working ON your business rather than working IN it.

You DO NOT need to take another lash course! 

There, I said it!

Honestly, your clients don’t really care how many certificates you’ve got on the wall from all the different courses and training you’ve done. They come to you because they heard you were good from someone else, because they came across your website and they love the way it looked, because they walked past your salon and they loved the vibe. They come to you because they related with you on social media and thought, “I’m gonna go see her for my lashes”. They honestly they don’t come to you because of how many qualifications you have. 

And now you might be sitting there thinking, “No, no that’s that’s not right Lauren”, but I have literally lived this. I have so many certificates! I have spent roughly in the vicinity of $100k on beauty and lash courses. I used to go to at least two trainings a year. Any new trainer that was coming from overseas, I’ve traveled to the USA and done training with amazing instafamous trainers, paid thousands of dollars for one on one training. And you know what? I didn’t really learn anything new at any of them at least nothing that really helped me in my business. 

Yeah, I could make my fans a little bit differently and more efficiently or whatever, but I was already good at lashes. I am good at them. I’m a bit slower now because I don’t do them as often, (I only work in my salon one day a week), but I was already good. I didn’t need to go and spend more money on lash training to help me build my business, because at the end of the day, I don’t want to be the best lash artist in my salon in my local area anymore. I want my TEAM MEMBERS to be! 

So I’m just gonna leave that there have a think about it. I don’t want clients to come to me anymore. This year is the year that I am cutting down my hours with clients completely, and by the end of 2022, I will not be physically working in my salon on clients. And that’s really hard to say because I only see my favourite clients. Over the years I’ve whittled down my client list and I really only see the clients that are now my friends! People that I genuinely love seeing and catching up with and making them feel good about themselves by doing their lashes and brows.

But it doesn’t serve me anymore to be spending 10 hours a week working on clients in my business. I need time to develop my team, grow my business more, really polish my policies and procedures and work on staff development and develop my salon manager, work on building up even better marketing for my businesses, not just my salon but for my personal brand, which includes my one on one coaching, my coaching programs and also my wholesale brand – Runway Lash Co, AND I need time to spend with my family as well. 

So I have set a goal – I’m going to be out of my salon by the end of 2022. I’ll still be in there. I’ll be around, I’ll have a little office there when we do our renovation later this year. I can get some admin work done and plan our posts for the week, but it will be my team looking after 100% of the clients. So I definitely don’t need to be doing any lash courses.

We learned to do brow lamination and hybrid brows in early 2021 and I had this realisation that I booked the training for 8 people. And I was like “why am I doing it? Why?” I asked myself the question, “Why am I doing this training? I don’t need to! I don’t have space for new clients. I don’t WANT new clients. I don’t want people to ask for me, I want people to ask my team!” So I actually called the trainer and said actually it’s only for 7 people, i’m not going to do it, I don’t need to learn this new technique. And I remember at the time my husband said to me, “what if you’ve got to fix up a stuff up?”, because let’s face it, it happens! Not every client is happy, mistakes do happen; especially when you’re learning a new skill and you’re implementing a new service into your salon. And I just said “My manager can do that, my team trainer can do that!” So it just made sense for me to not be doing that. I don’t need to be spending money on training myself in a skill that I’m not going to practice in my own salon.

I know that my situation is different to a lot of you that are reading this, but just a little bit of food for thought. Have a think about your training budget. Now if you don’t have a training budget, if you don’t set aside money for training, conferences, coaching, development, any sort of development for you, your team with your skills or whatever, I definitely advise you to do that, because when a training opportunity pops up or something that you want to go to or a coach that you vibe with is coming to town, it’s ideal that you’ve got the money, you’ve got the budget allocated to just be able to say YES and take action!

Have a think about what you want to do this year.

Where do you want to end up at the end of the year? 

Do you want to be able to make your fans a little bit faster?

Do you want to learn new methods of taping the lashes?

Do you want to learn that stuff? Or do you want to learn more about business?

Do you want to grow your business? 

Do you see yourself expanding your team? 

Do you see yourself going from a solo operator to having one employee by the end of the year?

Ask yourselves these questions and then apply your answers to what you’ve got planned for training because I can tell you that you’re probably already a good enough lash tech or beauty therapist, brow artist, cosmetic tattooist. And I can also tell you that if you’re reading these blogs or listening to my podcast, then you’re obviously a business owner or you’re interested in business, you want to grow and develop your business and yourself. 

So have a hard think about it. Clients don’t care about certificates. I can tell you that I don’t care about competitions. I should do a whole other episode on entering competitions. Because I have been there as well. I’ve entered a million different awards and look, I’ve won some. I’ve placed in a lot. But people don’t care. They do not care. At the end of the day. They don’t care.

I have another award, which I was so focused on winning. NALA is probably the most prestigious institution in Canada but it’s kind of a worldwide association, which is fantastic. I love what they stand for and I was so hell bent on winning another award and I did! I won it. Did it change my life or my business? No. I’ve got a trophy. I’ve got a really beautiful lead crystal trophy that’s on my shelf at home and I’m the only one that sees it! I’ve got a beautiful certificate. But did it bring more clients in? Nah. Did it put more money in my bank account? Nope.

So, you could be the best lash artist, beauty therapist, hair stylist, cosmetic tattooist, brow artists, whatever. You could be the best. If you don’t know how to market yourself properly, or you don’t know how to operate and grow a business, you don’t know how to manage staff, you don’t know how to manage clients. Then you’re never going to be able to grow. So it makes sense to me that you invest your time and money into learning those things, rather than learning a different skill or a better skill that’s really just going to get you another certificate on the wall that clients don’t care about.

If you want to learn how we can work together send me an email at hello@laurenlappin.com.au or DM me on Instagram – LaurenLappin_

Lauren x