3 Brutally Honest Lessons I Learned Before Becoming My Own Boss

0:00I don't know my friends and welcome back to Gipskins Circle. If you are new here, my name is Ashley Curtis. Many of you know me as speechless. Ashley and this podcast is where I talk about the real philosophies behind building a meaningful career in aesthetics and the deeper work of book hunting, the kind of provider whose presence changes every room you walk into. I started this podcast in a closet room floor in 2021 and I have reported over 120 episodes since then. Before we get into today's episode, I have a quick announcement. Last week I posted a facial massage video on Instagram that completely took off and because of that, this low flow and sculpt training happening Sunday June 14th is almost completely full. There are only two spots left and this is the one day advanced facial massage training

1:02where I teach my full lifting and lymphatic drainage protocol in a small hands-on group. You will watch it, give it and receive it and leave with the exact sequence I've spent years refining in the treatment room. So if you've been thinking about coming, this is your moment. Once those last two spots are gone, the class is closed for June. You can grab one through the link in the show notes. Alright, now let's get into today's conversation. Before I ever had my own business, before Agile Sasha existed, before workshops and retreats and golden clients, I spent years working for other people in the industry and those years taught me three lessons that she's everything about the way I run my career and my businesses today. Some of them might surprise you, so without further ado, let's get into it. Let's start with marketing. When I was about 10 years into working anesthetics, I had already opened a business that I had

2:07for two years and then decided to close it and move to LA. And if you've ever worked in the beauty industry in LA, you know the vibe, you know the energy. Everything is about visibility, everything is about hype, sometimes it can really feel like it's just all smoke and mirrors and everything is about who you know and lots of people who work in our industry have the goal to become celebrity as statisticians. And one of the biggest marketing strategies I watched happen unfold again and again and around me was free treatments for influencers and I hated it. I remember sitting there thinking, wait a second, we're giving away our time, our skill, our bodies, our spirit, our energy, our soul for someone to maybe post a photo, to maybe tag us to maybe bring in clients, sometimes it worked, but most of the time it didn't and

3:14mind you, there were no contracts with influencers at this time and influencer culture was really so very new and it was a huge gamble and really what felt like the Wild Wild West of the new marketing strategy of influencing that was just emerging at the time. So I think that's worth noting and I think it's very different now and before I move onto my story I would like to say that I do think that there can be tremendous value in working with influencers if done the right way. But back then what it created was a very strange dynamic where the provider, the professional was suddenly, I don't know, chasing attention instead of the other way around. I watched people bosses, people I worked with, other people who had businesses that I knew bend over backwards to impress and cater to quote unquote influencers, offering free treatments,

4:15offering discounts, offering packages, offering upgrades and it always left like a really strange taste in my mouth. I like I said, I just hated it. Like I really did not resonate with the quote unquote trade because when you start the dynamic that way, the message you're sending is my work needs validation and I just never believed that about myself or my workup until that point in my career, not even early on. Another marketing strategy I saw everywhere was discount marketing and group on marketing. Like 50% off facials by when get one free flash sale, this and that limited time special. You guys know that I hate discounts and I do not run my business that way. But this was very much a common thing and a common practice at this time when I was

5:15working in LA. And again, I understood why businesses did it, but I could feel the energy behind it. And we're always talking about energy on this podcast. So the energy behind it was desperation. And desperation is not attractive to the kind of client I wanted, which was the golden client, especially in a service based career where you're providing a luxury service and where trust really is the foundation of it actually feeling luxury. Discount marketing trains clients to wait to bargain, to negotiate, to see your work as something that can be reduced. And when your work involves your hands, your body, your spirit, your soul, your presence, that kind of energy, your roads, the relationship dynamic. The third thing I hated was aggressive marketing, which is something I experienced before I moved to LA while I was working for a corporate cosmetics company

6:19in San Francisco. I was a regional manager at this company and I got the job there because I was an esthetician and they knew that I could train the girls at their boutiques who were offering aesthetic services. But I was in no way qualified other than that. And it was an environment. I'm so happy I had the opportunity to experience in hindsight. But when I was working there, I hated every second of it because of how cutthroat and caddy it was. It was truly awful. And it was the kind of company that feels like someone is trying to close a sale every five seconds. You know, scripts and upsells and sales pressure on every single sales call. And if you've ever had someone try to sell you something while you are half naked on a treatment table, you know what I'm talking about. It's awkward. And it breaks the trust immediately. And here's the funny part about all of that. When I first became licensed, social media didn't exist the way that it does

7:25today. Instagram was not a marketing tool yet, a free marketing tool. TikTok didn't exist. There were no reels, no stories, no aesthetician educators or mentors, nothing's at zilch zero. So for the first eight years of my career, I was really observing marketing systems that felt completely misaligned. And then social media arrived. And suddenly there was a new possibility for me. There was a place where you could build something around your voice, your philosophy, your perspective, your values. And that's when everything really changed for me. Instead of marketing the treatments that I was offering, I started sharing my ideas and my knowledge around skin care. And instead of like pushing promotions all the time, I just started educating on Instagram. Instead of trying to bring everyone and their mother in, I started speaking directly to the kind of clients I wanted to work with what I now refer to as golden clients. Golden clients are not

8:31just people who can afford your services. They are people who respect your expertise. They trust your process. They show up ready to receive. They show up on time. They schedule month after month after month, and they're consistent. They understand that skin care is health care. And the truth is golden clients do not respond to desperate marketing. Golden clients respond to clarity, clarity of philosophy, clarity of expertise, clarity of presence. And once I realized that, like once that clicked for me, everything about my marketing changed. I stopped chasing attention. And I started building resonance within my personal brand, which I was now building. So let's talk about the second big thing that I learned working for other people, which is something I feel that a lot of institutions and service providers really avoid or just dread. And that is money,

9:33specifically taxes, bookkeeping, financial organization. When I was working for someone early in my career, I got a front row seat to the behind the scenes shit show chaos that happens. When businesses try to manage their finances without proper support, there was an audit happening. And I was like smack dab in the middle of like witnessing my boss at the time go through this, receipts everywhere, confusion, guesswork about expenses, stressing about the whole situation. And I remember thinking if I ever run my own business like this will never happen to me. I will never try to do this alone because financial clarity is about peace of mind above all else. So today in my own business, I have a CPA who does my monthly bookkeeping, my accounting, and then I have someone else who does my payroll. I often hire other financial advisors for investment guidance. And I meet with

10:37them regularly, not just once a year when it's time to do taxes, but consistently, monthly, quarterly. Because when your finances are organized, something really powerful happened. When you stop operating from survival and start understanding your numbers and you understand the strategy behind your numbers, your world quite literally opens up. You know your numbers, you know what your services actually generate. You know what you can reinvest into your business because you understand your profit margins. You know when to expand and raise your prices. You know when to slow down. You know when you can take a vacation. You know if you can take a vacation and how much money you can spend there. And a lot of service providers try to wear every hat in the beginning. And I know this like I know it, like I know it, like I know it. I talk to people all the time on my mentorship calls who are trying to do it alone or who are having a really hard time finding a great accountant.

11:37And so they just avoid it or put it off. And as a service provider, you cannot wear every hat in the beginning. You can't be the provider receptionist, marketer, photographer, bookkeeper, tax preparer, social media manager. Eventually all of that is going to become exhausting and you will burn out. And it also limits your growth because you're too destructive to be creative in your business, which is why you opened up business in the first place, right? I want you all to go. This just came to mind. It's not even in my notes, but I want you all to go get the book The Emeth by God, who is it by? There might be here on my bookshelf. I don't remember who it's by. It's called The Emeth. I'm going to link it in the show notes for you guys. I feel like his name is Michael Gerber. I don't know. Anyway, it's called The Emeth, the letter E and then the word myth. Just go get it. It's so good. He talks about this a lot. But going back to

12:38wearing every hat, you started this business because you wanted to be creative. You wanted full creative control, right? So one of the most important things I learned early on and in this situation specifically was to protect my zone of genius. And for the most part as traditions, that zone of genius is the treatment room, creating protocols, understanding the products that you're working with, your hands, your skill, your client relationships, your education, everything else can be supported by other professionals in their zone of genius. And the sooner you lean into that fact, the sooner your business can start thriving instead of just surviving. Now the third lesson might be the most important one of them all. I will die on this hill. Working for someone else gave me something incredibly valuable. And that is time to develop my skill set, time to practice, time to refine, time to become deeply intimate with the craft

13:43of aesthetics. And I truly believe this is one of the biggest reasons by working for someone else before going solo can be so powerful and almost required for most of us. Unless you are naturally gifted, unless you just have the skills that you were born with it, you were a born natural gifted facialist wax or whatever it may be, whatever your profession is, whatever your gift is, unless you have your gift down and you just know it, then it is so beneficial to go practice and someone else's business before going out and trying to practice in your brand new business. Because when you are building a business, the pressure changes. It's all on you. Suddenly you are responsible for everything. Rent, inventory, marketing, taxes, scheduling, client retention. And when that pressure exists, it becomes harder to slow down and focus on the artistry of your work. When I was working under someone else, I had the opportunity to do hundreds

14:46eventually thousands of treatments. I had time to study my craft relentlessly. I studied skin. I studied anatomy. I took so many classes that my employers paid for. I studied facial massage. I studied patterns in the skin. I studied chemical peels. I studied what actually creates results because I had a lot of different skincare lines that I didn't have to pay for it literally at my fingertips. Are you understanding this? That kind of repetition is how mastery develops. And mastery is what separates generalists from specialists. It's what separates the good from the great. A generalist offers everything. A specialist becomes known for something. And when you are known for something specific, something beautiful happens. You stop competing. You start attracting people who want your work and your hands only. Not just a facial, not just a service,

15:46but your approach, your philosophy, your way, your hands. And this is where ethics come into play because the deeper your skill set becomes, the more skilled you become, the more responsibility you carry. You're not just performing treatments. You're guiding people. You're educating people. You're influencing how people care for their skin and their bodies and their health. And that responsibility requires integrity. It requires honesty. It requires saying no sometimes. It requires recommending what is best for the client. Not what makes the most money in the moment, which is sometimes what can happen if you are a brand new business and you don't know what you're doing. That's how trust is built. And trust is what creates longevity in this industry. And if you are a business owner, when I look back at all of those early years working for other people, I feel deep gratitude. Even for the experiences that frustrated me like almost more so for those

16:49experiences, the bad bosses, the bosses that were probably doing the best they could with the knowledge that they had because those moments gave me clarity, clarity about the kind of business I wanted to build, the kind of business I didn't want to build. A business built on skill and integrity and education and alignment, not hype or smoke and mirrors, not discounts, not chasing attention, just honest work done exceptionally well. And the beautiful thing is when you build your career that way, something magical happens. You really don't have to chase clients. The right ones just start finding you. I'm serious. Your schedule fills with the people who respect your work. You just have to be visible. Your schedule fills with people who trust your expertise, who understand the value of what you have to offer. Those are golden clients. And when you build a career around golden clients, you create something sustainable and peaceful and deeply, deeply fulfilling. If you're currently

17:54working for someone else and dreaming about going solo some day, I want you to know something. This phase of your career is not a delay. It's an apprenticeship. You can look at it that way, even if you're an employee. It's an opportunity to observe, to learn, to refine your craft, to decide what kind of professional you want to become, so pay attention. Notice what feels aligned, notice what doesn't create a Google doc of your dream business and add insights you're observing to it every week because those observations will become the blueprint for the business you build later. And when that time comes, you'll step into it with clarity, with confidence, and with a skill set strong enough to support the life you want and attract the clients your business needs. Thank you for being here with me today. We'll chat soon. Thank you so much for being here with me today. If this episode spoke to you, it would mean

18:54so much if you left a quick review on Apple podcasts or tap the stars on Spotify. It helps more of our people find this show and join our community. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear and tag me on Instagram at HLS Ashley or at GoodsConsourable so I can see what landed for you. Take care of yourself. Keep choosing alignment. I love you, and I'll see you on the next episode.