In this episode, Brittany Hagemann shares her journey from becoming an aesthetician to making over $100,000 in her aesthetician business. She talks about her experience working for others, learning from different estheticians, and the challenges she faced. Brittany also discusses how she grew her business through Yelp, Instagram marketing, and SEO. She emphasizes the importance of specialization, particularly in acne treatment, and the power of setting goals and journaling.
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Brittany Hagemann (00:06.254)
You are listening to the Estheticians Anymore podcast with Brittany Hageman, episode number 165.
Brittany Hagemann (00:15.47)
Okay, so today I'm gonna do something that I haven't done before in this kind of detail, and that is I'm going to tell you my entire journey from when I became an aesthetician to when I started making over $100 ,000 in my aesthetician business. Because I think there are a lot of things in my story that hopefully can give you some inspiration, to give you some insight.
And to also give you some context of like what is normal and not normal when it comes to growing your business. So quick backstory. If you didn't already know, I was working at Target as an assistant store manager in 2000. Let's see, I started 2012, I wanna say. And I never really wanted to work at Target. It was at the after like the big financial.
meltdown that we had in 2008. I had a hard time getting a job out of college. like making more than $25 ,000 a year. Also didn't make that much money when I first started working for Target. I worked my way up, got promoted, and then was making like $75 ,000 a year, but I absolutely was miserable. My hair was falling out. It was a really hard job up until when I had my daughter. That was, I said like,
especially opening a Target store, which is what I did before I quit, was the hardest thing I've ever done. And then having my baby was the second hardest thing. I did a whole episode on my postpartum experience and why it was so hard. But my hair was falling out. I was so stressed out and I knew it wasn't sustainable and I I didn't even like want to work there, you know. And one of my good friends does, she still does hair and makeup for mostly for weddings in San Diego. She also does some.
film and some other things that she does for her makeup. But she's a cosmetologist and she was like, you can come and do makeup for me. And I really thought that was where I wanted to go and do makeup because it was like, how much fun would that be to play with makeup all day? So long story short, I quit, went to S edition school, got my license. And while I was in school, was shadowing her and learning how to do like wedding makeup and use the airbrush tools and things like that. So
Brittany Hagemann (02:40.556)
I worked for her as an independent contractor, it truly was. She'd be like, hey, these are the dates, I need weddings, do you want to work or not? She paid me a flat rate per person I did. And it was a really great way for me to make money and to get my foot in the aesthetics world. And then I started working for a solo aesthetician who was a great aesthetician, very, very booked out, could not accommodate.
any new clients, let alone her current clients. And I met her through my massage therapist. They were in like the same salon studio and she offered me a job, but she, it's not legal. It's definitely not legal now. It wasn't legal then. She also hired me as a contractor, which technically doesn't work in an esthetician environment. So I only got paid if I had
a facial. So I didn't have like a schedule or an hourly rate. And then if I had like commissions and I had like all the other things, it was like, I only got a commission. It was only commission based if I had a facial and if I sold products, that was the only way I could make money. So if I didn't have someone, I didn't make any money. So I kind of started learning right out of Estetician school what it was like to put myself out there. And
She definitely helped me, obviously, because she told all of her clients about me. She told them that it was great. But a lot of them had zero interest in seeing me because they loved her. They were devoted to her. And honestly, we have very different styles. I learned a lot from her, but ultimately, we are very different aestheticians. And so occasionally, some of her clients would see me if they couldn't get in with her and they had to reschedule or something and they really wanted it facial.
almost never did they stay with me. They always went back with her. I think they had like two people that liked me just as much and it was easier to get in with me and so stayed. But I remember if I would see, like if one of her clients would come and be on my schedule and then I would see them book back on her schedule, it would just like break my heart, right? Because I was like, what did I do wrong? They didn't want to stay with me. And so one of the ways that she grew her business was Yelp. And I think that Yelp is still pretty
Brittany Hagemann (05:00.238)
used today, but not to the degree that it was used like 10 years ago. She's totally been in business for more than 10 years, honestly, probably more like 15 years, but back when she started her business. And so she was like, you need Yelp reviews. So I called in favors from everyone I knew, please come get a facial. I just charged them the cost of the facials they would pay for like all the services, like all the products and stuff that it costs the woman I worked for. And I think it was like 20 bucks. And
I had them do that and then they had to me a review. So I could just get some, my name on the Yelp page, on her Yelp page, so that people, when they went to it, they were like, Brittany is great, because people think she's great. So that was, that was months. So I started working for her in July 2016. And I wanna say it wasn't until like,
January did I start to have regulars? And she also had a membership, which was helpful because then could convert people to being a member, know, just a little bit of a discount. So I always like would get everyone to be a member. And she didn't sell a lot of products. That's something that I was trying to learn and I felt very insecure about. And I've talked about that a lot on this podcast about like she sold Rhonda Allison. I also brought on PCA because that's what I had learned in school. And so I started selling a little bit of PCA, kind of enjoying like
seeing how people liked it and feeling really nervous about recommending the wrong product. Like that was my biggest fear and like don't come across as salesy and I didn't want to like feel no one full pressure. And I was, developing relationships and I realized very quickly that it's an S edition business is such a relationship based business. And I was developing relationships with my clients. They were coming monthly. I had like five members, you know, five people that came every month to me.
and then it slowly started to gain. I think I had like 25 members when I left, if I remember correctly. And so I was slowly starting to gain. started to get some more referrals. People started coming in with yell, but I still was promoting myself on Instagram. I had my own Instagram account and I was promoting what I was doing. Even though nobody, nobody was like coming in from my Instagram, I was constantly trying to keep that energy going.
Brittany Hagemann (07:25.868)
And at the same time, I was still doing makeup and I realized I needed more money. Like the makeup was good in the summertime and the fall, but then wintertime makeup really starts to slow down and I really needed extra money. And so I worked, went and I got permission from my woman I worked with and I went and got a job at like a local spa just so that I could get...
make more money and I was getting married and I just like I was doing better in my clientele. Like I was able to make money, but I wanted to make more and I had the time because I only had, when I worked for shoes in the room during the day, so I only had the nights and I think Sundays. And so I didn't have like a great schedule, which was fine. And so then I had the days that I could go work at like a day spa. So I did.
And I really wasn't that busy there either. I think if I had stayed longer, I would have definitely gotten more more regulars. But the thing that I learned the most from working there was about face reality, which was the acne line that I ended up falling in love with and seeing like, wait, I really could specialize in acne. And while I was working for my solo aesthetician business owner, I instantly loved acne.
She taught me how to do extractions. I painstakingly perfected it. I painstakingly perfected how to do all of the things. It was not like, this is so simple. And just picked it up and it was like not a thing. It took me months to really figure it out, figure out how to do them less painfully. There's so much to learn, I think, when it comes to extraction. So I really spent a lot of time when I was working for her learning just from trial and error, honestly, myself, on my clients.
But I started to really niche down in acne while working for her. And so when people would write reviews on Yelp, they would write like Brittany and acne. Like those things were tied together. And so I was kind of excited about that, but I wasn't getting the results I wanted with PCA and Rhonda Allison for their people's acne. could see like it wasn't enough. And I had experienced that as well because I had had acne and always felt that like way with wines.
Brittany Hagemann (09:51.734)
Yeah, you give me salicylic acid and benzyl peroxide and like we're still here, right? I'm still breaking out. So I went to the woman I worked for and I was like, listen, I want to bring on face reality. I was still a contractor. I wasn't an employee. I was like, you can get a cut of what I do. Like we can create a system.
I wanted to get my… There was like a room next door opening up. was like, how about I get that in my own room and then I get all the acne and you do all the peels, like the heavy peels and other things that she does that I didn't like doing. And she was like, absolutely not. I don't want to do that. And so it just kind of became clear at that time as well that she really needed an employee. I think she like from a tax perspective, she realized that like it wasn't working having me be a contractor and she wasn't making that much money.
And so she wanted me to become an actual employee at that time, which actually was the right legal decision. But I was like, no, it was going to be a big, big pay cut for me. And so we split ways at that point. But she was very generous. And she was like, you can have all of your clients, which is not common. And I know that. So I would say about 10 to 15 people followed me, which was fantastic. They were all facial clients. But some of had mild acne. And through that process, one of my facial clients
her skin had improved considerably with acne. She had very mild acne and it had gone away. And that was my only before and after. And it wasn't like even that significant before and after. It was very mild. And I remember when I was looking to open my own business, which I had never, intended to have in my own business. Cause one of the reasons I wanted to be an aesthetician was it just to like go to work, do my work and go home. Like I didn't want to have to worry.
I didn't want to have to stress. I didn't want to feel the stress of growing a business. But then I realized I basically had done that working for the solo aesthetician and then even my other aesthetician business trying to get people to rebook. I realized it's a lot of the same skills as owning your own business. And so I was like, okay, the clients that I have, if they come every month for a facial, it would
Brittany Hagemann (12:04.11)
cover my cost. I wouldn't be making any money, but at least I wouldn't be going negative. And that was really important to me to figure out that before I signed a lease and all the things. So I opened BLH Beauty in October 2017. I also got married that year, like right before I got married, came back from my honeymoon, opened my business. It was like a whirlwind. So it was a little over a year after I got my license and I just had my facial clients and they knew
that acne was what I wanted to do. I brought in face reality. did the training again through face reality so I could sell it myself.
Brittany Hagemann (12:44.758)
And I was very excited and very terrified at the same time because I had never cleared anyone using face reality. Face reality is very complex. There's a lot to learn. At the time, it was a very, very small company, as I've said before on this podcast. Their Instagram was Face Reality Acne Clinic. Their...
If you needed help, you would just call them. You would email them as well, but it was a very different world than it is today. And people didn't know about face reality. Clients didn't know about it. I always had to tell people about it. Almost never did someone come to me wanting face reality. And so my friend, I had a couple of friends in the industry. So my friend, her name is Alice. She's the one that does the hair and makeup that I was working for her doing makeup. And she was like, you need to just...
offer free facials or like $20 facials. like walk around and offer like your shopping center. I was in a busy shopping center, like just walk up to people and offer like $20 facials. And she did that when she was growing, like she used to cut hair as well as doing makeup and she was cutting hair. So she would offer like discounted, severely discounted haircuts and then people would come back after that. And I remember like...
hearing that and thinking, well, I guess I can never do this. And this is the part of my story that I really want you to pay attention to. Not to say you can't do that. If that feels like you can do it, you should definitely do it. Like do anything you can to make people know about your business. But I knew like walking up to someone,
First of all, with an acne treatment, asking them to come in for like a $20 acne treatment, there were so many reasons why it wouldn't work for me. But even though I was just doing a facial, like I don't know, walk up to a stranger. It brought me back to my Mary Kay days where like we were supposed to like, what is it called? Warm chatter or something. What is it called? You guys know if you've done Mary Kay, you're supposed to like talk to people like in the grocery store, give them your... It was like flashing back to that. I was like, I...
Brittany Hagemann (15:02.466)
Like, have I done? I can't do that. And Instagram was pretty new and it was just pictures. At the time there was no stories, it was just pictures. And I was like, well, I have to figure out a way to like advertise and market in a way that isn't me walking up to strangers and talking to them. And I'd asked all of my friends,
and clients to write me Yelp reviews on the Yelp page. And I started tracking like the, how far I was up on Yelp and seeing like how that worked. And I would like always be like in trying to figure out their algorithm and Google as well. Google reviews didn't exist at the time, but trying to make sure that my website would be the top if you search like AccuTreatment San Diego. So I was like working on those things and learning those things. One of the things that my friend Alice told me as well, she's like, your SEO.
And so I spent a lot of time figuring out how to do that. So I started doing that and then I would sometimes advertise through Yelp because Yelp at the time, it wasn't that crazy to advertise and I had some good reviews and so it also bumped me up in the Yelp algorithm. Honestly, advertising was one of the reasons I did that. So I was doing that and then I took a marketing Instagram course just to learn how to make your grid look really nice and how to simplify your message.
And I just went all in on those things. So I was constantly making sure my SEO was good, constantly making sure my Yelp was higher, marketing on Instagram, and then talking about my business to everyone I knew, telling them about my referral program, trying to get people in. And then the other thing that I did,
and I actually just found them the other day. I found my journals as I was journaling every day and I'm gonna go and look at them and look at like what I was writing because I would write down my goals every single day and I would write them down in the way that I teach my clients now. And I remember when I, I remember like I flashed back instantly when I saw the journal and was like, I remember writing this and thinking this is the craziest thing in the entire world.
Brittany Hagemann (17:23.874)
And then a few months later, you see me write different numbers, like my numbers went up. I'm gonna grab those journals for you right now.
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