Things Makeup Artists Do That You Don't See

I saw a post recently that explained that a lot of people assume makeup artists and hair stylists that specialize in weddings only work one or two days a week, on the weekends when they’re working the weddings. I thought this would be a good opportunity to educate others about the complexities of what goes on behind the scenes, that clients often don’t see. Have you ever wondered what goes on in the back end of a professional makeup artist’s life? Let’s talk about it.

Makeup brush washing: Last year, I kept track each time I would wash brushes in a note on my phone because I was curious what it would add up to at the end of the year. When I added that number together, it came to a grand total of 15 HOURS. Although this was throughout an entire calendar year, I was still shocked to see just how much time goes into standing at a sink, monotonously washing every single brush that graces each client’s face. It’s super important to ensure sanitary, safe work, but it’s definitely my least favorite task of all.
Continued education: It’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in makeup and hair and continuously learn new and better ways to serve our clients. This means watching webinars, attending in-person workshops, and doing other research during our free time. Something that puts some artists a cut above the rest is always questioning how you can better yourself and your craft.
Website upkeep: Some people outsource this part, but I’m still here keeping my website up-to-date myself. This means continuously updating various portfolios of work, adding new team members bios and photos when they join the team, updating copy (aka the words and paragraphs on your website) from time-to-time, creating blog posts, optimizing SEO (aka search engine optimization – the gold standard that gets you found online), and more!
Legalities: Although I have a small business attorney who creates our contracts, service agreements, client consent forms, terms & conditions page, and privacy policy page to ensure they’re legally binding, I have to keep these up-to-date from time to time. For example, when the pandemic hit, I had to update our wedding contracts multiple times to ensure clauses now included pandemic-related things, as well as used a waiver when working on client’s faces at the height of the pandemic, since we didn’t want to be liable for anyone catching the virus when we were doing everything in our power to keep people safe. It’s an incredible asset to you as a small business owner to have a solid attorney.
Taxes: Another important asset to any small business owner is your accountant or CPA. As I’ve grown, I’ve had a multitude of questions to make sure I’m staying on top of various payments to the state and IRS, including sales taxes, quarterly tax estimates, and now payroll taxes. I meet with my CPA multiple times a year, not just during busy tax season, to make sure I’m anticipating payments rather than being surprised by them. No small business owner enjoys paying just how much we pay in taxes, but it’s a much better situation to be prepared for it.
Emails: Emails, emails, EMAILS! I’ve worked on automating some emails recently to help with my workflows and not have to burden myself with remembering copy and paste emails every week during busy season, but overall, I’m still in my inbox A LOT. I’m constantly answering people’s questions and concerns and bookings new and returning clients.
Social media: Running social media has seriously become a full time job in it of itself these days. This is another thing that would be beneficial to outsource someday, but for now, it’s all me! I run our Instagram page, TikTok page (that one’s fun for me), Facebook page, Twitter page (okay, that one’s just there to be there and runs on auto-pilot), YouTube channel, and Pinterest page. There always seems to another social media platform coming out and as small business owners, it feels like we always have to be on the possible “next best thing” to get our business in front of as many people as possible. With constant changing algorithms and having to actually work with clients and run a business, it becomes overwhelming to try and post as much as every platform wants you to, but we do our best!
Running a team: I’ve been growing, booking, maintaining, and training a team of incredible makeup artists and hair stylists since 2019. They mainly work on our wedding bookings with some special events mixed in, such as prom and photoshoots. It’s a whole other beast to stay organized with bookings when you have multiple people relying on you to relay accurate and up-to-date information to them. You also have to ensure they’re professional, timely, work well in a team environment, and provide an amazing customer experience. It’s been an interesting experience learning how to run a team effectively and well.
Client bookings: This kind of goes with the emails part, but we’re obviously constantly booking clients, as that’s how we stay in business. Wedding clients are our bread and butter, and those bookings take a little more effort to coordinate. We also provide spa services, such as lash lift and tints, brow lamination, and facial waxing and brow tinting. We are constantly marketing and networking to get new clients in the door, then we are constantly working to get these clients booked so they can come in for their selected service and a great experience.
Empowering people: Last but absolutely not least, we empower people. It’s vitally important to me that we are always uplifting our clients, making them feel good in their own skin, and provide an exceptional service. Although we are human and inevitably we will never make everybody happy, we work hard to make sure people leave looking and feeling good.