Episode 150: Business & Financial Planning for the Long Term: Interviewing Beauty Boss Leann La

Sep 11, 2023

What you will learn from this episode:

Learn the key to having strategies and systems in your beauty business

Hear about the need for financial planning and investing outside of your business.

Gain a better understanding of the importance of self-awareness, effective communication, and the significance of delegating tasks

Our guest, Leann La, a highly experienced permanent makeup artist and beauty boss joins us to discuss the importance of understanding the business side of being an artist and taking risks as an entrepreneur. She is a permanent makeup artist extraordinaire, who has performed over 15,000 procedures and coached over 8,000 artists worldwide.

In this episode, we dive into the key strategies and elements to growing and scaling her successful beauty business. We discussed the risks she took and the lessons learned along the way. You’ll hear about the importance of sound financial planning and investing for entrepreneurs. Truly eye-opening!

Plus, Leann La shares her experience with running a business with family members. From the importance of shared visions, mutual respect, and open communication to self-awareness, this episode is packed with valuable wisdom you won’t want to miss.

Topics Covered:

00:29 - Introduction to Leann La's background and accomplishments

01:35 - Starting a beauty business with family and finding your passion

07:39 - Transitioning from artist to teacher

09:55 - Focusing on how to improve

10:54 - Lessons Learned from the different aspects of running a business.

14:14 - The challenges of scaling a business, finding balance, and delegating

16:35 - Building a team

17:40 - Seeking feedback to improve

20:02 - The importance of taking risks

28:01 - Facing financial challenges and the importance of money management in the beauty industry.

30:30 - Investing, and long-term financial planning for retirement.

31:44 - Exploration of a beauty business exit strategy

32:38 - The challenges and benefits of working with family members

34:54 - Utilizing individual strengths in a partnership

36:07 - Trust and accountability

40:41 - Aligning goals, being supportive, and staying focused on personal vision.

42:44 - Advice to Younger Self

51:10 - Upcoming projects, online education, and mentorship

52:28 - The value of spending time with loved ones.

Key takeaways:

"Anything great is going to take time. I know sometimes we see things on social media and it looks like everyone did it overnight. But it doesn't happen that fast you have to be patient. And as long as you're passionate about what you do." - Leann La

"You might not jump for joy after you take training, it's going to challenge you. It is natural to have doubts, like, "This is harder than I thought", or "I don't know if I can do this". Just keep going because you don't know how your life can change." - April Meese

"No matter how long you've been in the business, you're going to experience so many ups and downs. I've learned so many different things. As far as teaching. I've learned that as a trainer I need to always also be a student, there's no stopping me when it comes to education and training. Sometimes people get into the industry and they think I'm gonna take my first training and that's all I need. But it isn't that way. I find that a lot of the top leaders in the industry are also the ones who are constantly taking classes, constantly educating themselves, and constantly getting mentorship. And I think that's so important. It's kind of like what you do, April. You're a mentor to so many other permanent makeup artists out there. And what you do is so important because sometimes we learn to be artists and we have no clue how to run a business, right? We have no clue how to market our business, have no clue how to even make sure we're doing things legally. It's so important." - Leann La

"As an entrepreneur, I always want to at least know a little bit about marketing, a little bit about the different operations and business side of things, because when I hire somebody to put them in that position, I want to make sure that it's the right person and that they're doing their job. If you don't know at least the basics of things, you may have no clue if what they're doing is helping your business." - Leann La

"Once you learn to get some of that help whether it be hiring somebody or nowadays you can get a lot of help, just not even having to do like hire a full-time person, right? And hire an assistant for a shorter period, just like a virtual assistant and things like that. I feel like that was important because you can't go at 110% forever. You have to know that at some point you're going to crash if you keep doing that to yourself. So one of the things I learned was just really to delegate certain tasks and continue doing the things that I knew I was good at, like building on my strengths and making sure that I got help for the things that I wasn't as good with." - Leann La

"I know sometimes we like to hear all the good stuff like "You're doing great!". But honestly, I think getting honest feedback, whether it be from your students or I sometimes have my employees sit in on my classes so that they can give me feedback. Because sometimes you're teaching and you don't know what you're missing and people learn differently. People learn visual hands-on like there are so many styles of the way people learn and I wanted to make sure that my class incorporated all those different learning styles. So just really important to mostly get that feedback so that you can improve.- Leann La

"There's going to be moments when you're going to have to show up more than your business partner, or he or she's going to have to take on more than you do. And you have to be okay with that. It's not like, Oh, what is he doing? And what am I doing? You're not keeping tabs on each other. I think it's one of those things where you just do because you care about your business, where it is going, and what I need to do to keep the business strong, rather than what my partner is doing." - Leann La

I do feel very blessed that I was able to get through it because I know a lot of businesses couldn't, but it really woke me up. It made me feel like, gosh, if it happens again, can I sustain it, you know?"- Leann La

Fusion Artistry - Website: fusionartistry.com

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Episode 150: Business & Financial Planning for the Long Term: Interviewing Beauty Boss Leann La

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