Over a decade ago, I was blessed with an opportunity to be mentored on business and finance by an influential multimillionaire. Many of the lessons I learned from him helped me to build a five figure a month lash business and I still use his advice to this day. I'll share the key takeaways from being mentored by a multimillionaire in this article.
Read time: 10 minutes
Not many people know this but before I became a lash artist, I had a corporate job. When I started that job, in my mind, I knew I wouldn't be there long.
In fact, I even told the person who interviewed me that I had to take two days off within a month of starting the job so I could take my test for the state board.
My plan was that as soon as I got licensed, I would be out of there, working at a salon or starting my own business.
Unfortunately, things didn't happen the way I thought they would and I got really comfortable with the medical benefits the company offered and a consistent paycheck.
About four years into that job, I ran into financial troubles and I thought I'd have to quit that job because the money I was making wasn't enough to cover my bills, transportation getting to and from work and my new baby.
I told my boss at the time the position I was in and she told me not to quit until she spoke to the owner of the company about it.
So a few days later, I get called into a meeting with the owner of the company and I'm paraphrasing this but he said, “I see something in you that reminds me of myself at your age. I want to help you but only if you really want it.” And then he told me what I'd have to do if I really wanted his help which involved weekly meetings where I showed him every part of my financial life.
At that point, I was desperate for help and so I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to get help. But I also recognized this man was a lot further down the road in business than I was and there was a LOT for me to learn from him.
So I humbled myself, met with him and did everything he asked of me. I learned so many valuable lessons from him that I am so grateful for. Things that have helped me tremendously in life and in business.
And today, I'm sharing a few of those lessons with you.
LESSON ONE - NEVER COMPETE ON PRICE
The company I worked for sold a few products that could be found for much less in price online. In some cases, it was more than 50% less buying it somewhere else.
But that never stopped the company from selling it for a premium. See, when people bought this product from the company, they didn't just get the product. They got a guarantee, lifetime customer support, tootsie rolls in the package and incredible customer service.
At the beginning of my business, I thought to offer discounts to get people in the door which I shared with him and he immediately discouraged me from lowering my price.
He said, “when you're the cheapest and you compete on price, there's always going to be someone that comes in and charges less than you. To keep up, you'll have to keep lowering your price more and more until you have no profit and that's no way to build a business. Instead, you need to be the highest and you won't have to work as hard or take as many clients to make money.”
This is a principle that Robert Cialdini talks about in his book, “Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion.” In his book, he tells the story of how one store had a sale on an item and barely sold any of them. But another store down the street sold the same thing for significantly more in price and they sold out of that same product.
In the customers mind, since the item cost so much, to them it meant the item was more valuable. So they were willing to pay the higher price.
So as a lash artist, if you charge a premium for the services you offer, automatically clients will assume you offer more value than other lash artists or that you must be doing something far more amazing than everyone else. So their more likely to book with you and pay your service fee.
Now I should mention that you shouldn't charge a premium for the heck of it. You really should offer high quality and a lot more value than other artists. And that's a lot easier to do you're making more money and reinvesting that into your business.
So never compete on price. Don't be the cheapest lash artist and always charge a premium for the work you do.
LESSON TWO - I MAKE INTELLIGENT DECISIONS MANAGING MONEY
One day my mentor and I were walking into the office together and he says to me, “your car is going to break down.” I looked at him thinking… he has a lot going on so he probably forgot that my car is practically brand new. So I said, “probably not for quite some time. My car is almost new.”
This time, he looked me dead in the eyes and spoke more sternly…“your car is going to break down and you need to be financially prepared when that happens. Repeat after me. I make intelligent decisions managing money.”
And that’s when I got it. He wanted me to have the mindset to where I was always prepared financially in the event something unexpected came up. That’s one thing about life… there’s always something unexpected that’s going to happen. If you’re prepared for it and you’ve planned in advance, it’s a lot less stressful to manage.
He wanted me to take on the mindset of something is going to happen so I need to prepare for it now rather than be caught like a deer in headlights and no plan when it does.
The reason why I got into financial troubles had a lot to do with me trusting that certain people would honor their financial commitments when I became a mother. But unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way after having my daughter which left me scrambling to pay for things that I didn’t expect to pay for.
By preparing in advance, it put me in a position where I would be ok financially and wouldn’t have to rely on anyone coming through when they said they would. If they didn’t, I would still be ok.
So make the choice to prepare yourself as much as possible. Anticipate things will go bad and put yourself in a position to handle it without loads of stress in the process.
LESSON THREE - DON’T SETTLE, NEGOTIATE
When I first started working with my mentor on finances, he asked that I show him all of my monthly bills. He needed to get an idea of what was going in and what was coming out. One of the things I showed him was my car payment and he was shocked to see I was paying an interest rate of over 20% on the loan. In my eyes, I was just happy to have a car considering I had terrible credit. But when I got the car, my dad was with me and he never said anything about it being a terrible interest rate so it wasn’t even something that crossed my mind.
Once my mentor saw that interest rate, he told me, “we’re going to get on the phone and get the interest rate lowered.” When he said this, I was completely confused because I didn’t even know that was possible. I thought once you sign on the loan, it was permanent. But he taught me otherwise.
Now I will say, this isn’t something that is easily done if you have poor credit. But if you have excellent credit, it’s definitely something you can try and it’s in your best interest to pay the lowest interest rate possible. So don’t be afraid to call creditors that have a high interest rate to negotiate a better rate.
LESSON FOUR - PRESENT THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF
This may be hard for a lot of people to believe but I am seriously a sweat pants, tank top and flip slops kind of girl. If I could get away with wearing that daily with no makeup and my hair pulled up into a messy bun, I promise you I would.
When I showed up to work back in the day, although I wore professional clothes, I just didn’t really put much effort into my appearance. And there were some days where I’d look put together and polished, but other days where I would look a complete mess. I was just inconsistent.
My mentor told me that it’s important to look my best everyday I showed up to work because if I did, I would stand out and shine. By the time we started working together, I had gained weight from having a baby and my diet was terrible. If I’m being honest, it’s still not the best and I’m still completely out of shape. But despite that, if I put the effort in my appearance to look good everyday, people would take me seriously and treat me different.
So I went ahead and pulled out my good stuff to wear to work. And I can remember there were a few days where my mentor walked into the office, saw that I had taken his advice to heart and all he could say was, “Dela, you’re shining.”
And you know what? I didn’t do it for praise. I didn’t do it for recognition. I did it because a successful person in my eyes suggested it. And the byproduct of that was that I felt good about myself when I looked in the mirror and I noticed that people treat me different when I pulled myself together. Taking pride in my appearance encouraged people to treat me better and they saw me in a different light so it opened the doors to more opportunity.
LESSON FIVE - EXCEED EXPECTATIONS
One day we were sitting in the conference room and we were at the point where he was confident in my ability to manage my finances. I was out of debt at that point and he knew that I no longer needed to check in with him on a weekly basis. He pulled out a piece of paper and he drew a line. Next to that line, he wrote the word, “expectations.”
Then he began telling me about how the world operates. He said that most people will do the bare minimum to get by in life. Then he drew a line just under that line and said the majority of people will work just hard enough to be right below meeting expectations. Then you have people that will meet expectations.
He then drew a line much higher above the expectations line and said, “then there’s a small group of people that operate on a much higher level and they go above and beyond to exceed expectations. This is where you want to operate if you really want to get ahead in life.”
I’ll admit, I don’t always do this. But I did back then. And I think because I was conditioned to always perform at a higher level than most people, maybe I’m a bit critical and I am working above and beyond most people.
What I can say is that if you do everything with a spirit of excellence and you’re always looking for ways to be better than the average person, it opens up so many doors of opportunity. So never strive to meet expectations, instead strive to exceed them… by a lot.
I feel beyond blessed that I had a chance to work with a mentor one on one like I did. As someone who came to this country with $600 in his pockets, for him to buy a business and turn it into a multi million dollar business in less than a decade, I admire him greatly.
I hope that by sharing a few of the lessons I learned from him, it encourages you and helps to move you forward in your lash business.
If you want to learn more about mastering your lash application so you can attract amazing clients and build a successful lash business, join the Lash Masters Monthly. I release classes on a monthly basis teaching you everything I know about lashing and business there.
