Welcome to the Esthetician Edit™ Podcast. I’m sharing my journey from teaching in South Korea to becoming a entrepreneur—and all the twists, turns, and lessons in between. Tune in to hear how passion, resilience, and a love for self-care shaped my path and my purpose!
Welcome to the Esthetician Edit™ Podcast.
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My story in this field actually began in South Korea, where I was teaching English and fell in love with a rich and just intentional beauty culture. There Korean skincare is so much more than just products. It's lifestyle choices like diet, exercise and intentional living. Starting this podcast feels like a natural next step for me, because I've just seen how much support our industry truly needs. And as estheticians, so many of us don't realize when we go solo that we're stepping into business ownership as our first role, and we are estheticians second. So the whole point of this podcast is really to help empower my community to feel inspired and capable in the daily work that we do. To date, I'm lucky to own a business where I get to exclusively distribute Korean skincare. I love being able to bring these innovative and effective products to other estheticians who share my passion for quality and result driven skincare. But this role is a culmination of a very long journey filled with some twists and a lot of learning as well. I am what you would call a late bloomer in like every sense of the word. My career didn't really take off until I was in my late 30s. I became a mother a bit later too. So if anyone here feels like they're on a less traditional path, I want you to know that you're not alone and that incredible things can come from doing things in your own time. I've just always kind of followed what inspired me or felt right, and that really began honestly in my early 30s, when I took a chance and moved to South Korea for just under a year to teach English as a second language. It just seemed like the perfect opportunity to live abroad and experience a new culture. Pretty quickly after I settled in, I fell in love with the beauty culture, just because it's so different than anything else in Korea, skincare is more than just a routine or a series of steps. It's a whole lifestyle. It's how you care for yourself, what you eat, your movement, your mindfulness. Skincare is part of a balanced life. It's not just a product regimen. And this really opened my eyes to the concept that beauty and wellness can go hand in hand, which I found deeply inspiring when I moved back to the States. I knew I wanted to somehow bring that perspective and that experience into my life. So I finished my degree in anthropology, and then I pretty quickly shifted and knew that I wanted to become a esthetician. I did not go to an esthetic school. I actually did an apprenticeship at a local Med Spa, which, in hindsight, was helpful in a lot of ways, because it wasn't very structured. It required me to take initiative, and I was really hungry for it. So for me, it worked out well. So after a couple years of working there, and then pretty quickly, after I had my son, they found out that I wanted to go solo, and so I was let go immediately. And although I was really heartbroken, I was even more determined to not let them get me down, and definitely determined to find my footing again. I had a family that was depending on me, and I think that it definitely was a monumental stepping stone to the career that I had following that. And I know many of you have probably faced similar situations where your dreamer plan suddenly seems out of reach. So I hope my experience can reassure you that even in the hardest setbacks, it can lead to new beginnings, and I am proof of that. So I opened a little studio. I found a small, little 400 square foot storefront in historic downtown, and I didn't really have a big vision at that point. I definitely didn't have a detailed business plan. All I knew was I had a passion, commitment, and I knew that I was going to succeed over the course of a year. I. I was able to get a pretty good following. I built up my clientele. I had a lot of repeats, and I was booked out, and I was busy, and then COVID hit, which changed everything. I remember being so scared, because I literally just got to the point where I felt financially stable, and then it was like, you know, I was knocked off my feet again. At this point, I realized I needed to pivot, and I had already started kind of thinking of ways that I could support the esthetic community, because I was feeling a little lonely and lost, and so I had started a Facebook group called support and success for the solo esthetician, where I just wanted to make connections with other estheticians. I knew that I was going to do something with that group, I just didn't really know what. And then, during the closure, I decided to pivot, and I reached out to some of my contacts in Korea, and really leaned into this new era of kinesthetics. So here I am today, and I am now in a role where I just support other estheticians with products and education. That's an amazing position to be in, but I see so many estheticians struggling. So that is my come up story. That is how I really got my footing, how I started in the industry. And I am always so inspired by our community, and in the last year, I've really gotten into listening to podcasts. I have found them to be an incredible resource. So my hope is, with this podcast, the long form, conversational format, will allow us to dive deep into topics that I might not get to touch on elsewhere. And I realized that as estheticians, we need a space to connect, to learn and support each other, beyond just sharing skin care technique. So my hope is, I'm creating a space where we can talk about what really matters, what it means to be a business owner in this industry, and to provide support and inspiration. That is my hope. So the esthetician edit is really a space for us to talk about business, and especially parts of business that often go unspoken, the highs, the lows, the struggles with balance and the courage it takes to put ourselves out there. I want every esthetician listening to feel empowered and inspired by their daily work and to see yourselves is a true business owner outside of skincare and business, let's get a little personal. I'm incredibly passionate about travel, culture and self care. I'm inspired by the way each culture has its own perspective on beauty, health, wellness. Believe that taking care of ourselves, giving ourselves grace in this chaotic world is essential, although I'm first to admit, I am not the best at giving myself grace. I have a young child who is fun and vibrant and whiny and inquisitive and silly and emotional, all while being a business owner, it is often difficult to kind of balance being a mom and a business owner, I'll be honest with you, and so I also hope to touch on that a lot within the podcast, because I don't think that that is spoken of enough. Once you have a child, you often lose part of your identity and identity that your business requires, and so it is always a constant struggle. So thank you for joining me on this journey. We decided to see where it takes us, and I cannot wait to bring you insight stories and maybe even a few surprises along the way. Until next time, I'll see you in the treatment room.