Building Confidence at Work By Charlotte Ravet

I find that the most challenging part of my job is not taking things personally. We do work that we are all passionate about, but as with any work, we can be confronted with feedback from clients, colleagues, and relatives. Feedback can be positive, constructive, or negative sometimes, and I believe it happens to everyone who works with people’s images. We all have those days at work when we have tried our best to satisfy a client but do not achieve the desired result. Clients sometimes provide feedback; sometimes, we are unhappy with the results.

Whenever I didn’t reach something, I was really happy with, I used to be upset. As you read it, I am sure we all want to do things perfectly. As with any job, we can have some great successes and some failures or deceptions, and that’s ok, it can happen. Learning from bad experiences also helps to grow and avoid making the same mistakes.

As beauty professionals, we deal with people’s personal images, and there is only so much we can do. Clients sometimes come to us with high expectations of the outcome we can deliver, but we can’t always meet all expectations. Conducting an in-depth consultation is crucial to understanding what the client wants and setting realistic expectations. I have found that taking the time for these steps has helped me communicate better with my clients and reach a positive outcome at the end of the service.

It’s very healthy to be in an industry where our goal is to make people attractive. When I can make someone feel great in their skin or when I see a beautiful face and dream of creating makeup on it, I am very happy. Personally, it has helped me a lot with my self-confidence, as I am more relaxed about my appearance. I have learned that beauty is also a vibe, a charisma, and the way you make people feel when you are around them. One time I did makeup on an 80-year-old woman and thought, “How beautiful she is!”. With or without makeup, she was beautiful just the way she was, bubbly, smiling, and with these kind eyes.

We all learned to do nothing during the pandemic, and it felt great for a time to learn how to live differently. When I was not working, I always felt guilty because I thought I could do something to advance my career. Besides, I love what I do, so why not do it all the time? Success comes with a lot of work, but to maintain a healthy relationship with my work and others, I have learned to become more detached and to give myself time to resource and spend time with my loved ones. Moreover, it allows me to step back and reflect to come up with new ideas and inspiration.

Social media, accounting, calendars, networking...In addition, to provide the best service to our clients, most of us also have to run a business as a freelancer or business owners. Some days I panicked because I didn’t have the time or knowledge to do everything. Looking after the business whilst building a network and working at the same is not always easy. I have found it helpful to schedule my week or month with things I can do to work on the business and work in the business. Some days are spent on admin, some days on paid jobs, and some days are spent learning new skills and exploring creativity. I have also researched software’s that help a lot with accounting and marketing.

With the constant flux of information on social media, I felt it was sometimes challenging to follow the trends and be inspired to create or try something new. But I am now looking at it as everyone has their own niche and skill set. I enjoy looking at inspirational work online and seeing what I can do and what I can admire. I feel my business has also benefited from focusing on doing one thing better rather than trying to do too many different things.

I enjoy learning constantly. My trainer told me once: “The day I feel I know everything, the day I feel my work is perfect, I will change career.” This has been a mantra I refer to after every job. There are always things to improve, but the most important thing is to take it in a positive way, to learn, grow, improve, and celebrate small successes.