We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katherine Woodward. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katherine below.

Katherine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

I have had two amazing leaders! I am very lucky to not have experienced not one, but two very influential leaders.

The first would be my mother, Kelly Bennett, inventor of Bumpits hair volumizing inserts. She was the CEO of our company, and I was the Vice President of marketing. She is an incredibly brave leader, risking everything & rocking her role in a male dominated industry (as-seen-on-tv products). She wasn’t afraid to take some huge chances & the result was a successful, cult phenomenon product. I learned so much along this journey- from running a million dollar company, to treating employees and colleagues with kindness, and being firm with decisions on business moves while never compromising values. She is still my greatest mentor, and guides me along with way of my own beauty business. Plus she loves my spray tans, and that is the best!

The second would be Kelly Callaghan, a trail blazing industry leader in the sunless tanning industry. I was an educator with her company, Spray Tan Class, and aided in researching and writing a portion of her master class training guide. She is also a brave entrepreneur, not afraid to take chances & try new things. Because of her, there are now brand neutral trainings within the sunless tanning industry.She has empowered countless women to follow their dreams. I feel like every time I talk to Kelly I learn something new- she has a unique mind that never shuts off, with great ideas!!

Katherine, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Katherine Woodward, and I am a beauty entrepreneur. My range of expertise in the beauty industry are expansive. I am a sunless tanning educator, I run my own award-winning spray tanning salon, I am a television makeup artist and hair stylist, and I helped develop a product called the Bumpit. My gateway, so to speak, into the beauty industry was with the Bumpit. We had a very low budget in the beginning, so I was our makeup artist, hair stylist, and our drugstore-bought sunless tanning expert. I had constant television appearances & it was when HD cameras were first coming out- so I had to teach myself how to do makeup and hair so it would be perfect on these cameras that pick up every flaw. This was before YouTube tutorials were a thing & also makeup artists and hair stylists didn’t just share their secrets back then. So I learned by doing! I became very good at it, after much trial and error, and after the fad of the Bumpit fizzled out (it lasted much longer than we anticipated!) it was the base to my next beauty ventures. I started with wedding makeup and doing spray tans in the spare room in my house… and that eventually evolved into doing makeup for television shows and having my own tanning salon!  My salon is very laid back, and my goal is always to make my clients feel at ease and comfortable while they’re with me and to leave feeling amazing about themselves!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Two things built my reputation in the beauty industry. Excellence in my craft/technique, and excellence in customer service. You can not have a successful business without a beautiful blend of the two. I do not offer services that I am not excellent at. I have eleven years of experience in tanning and 15 in makeup and hair. I didn’t start charging until I took many classes, practiced (for free – do not ever charge people you are practicing on, for goodness’ sake) a LOT, and knew what I was good at. There have been things along the way I thought about doing and saw within my practice phase that it was not something I excelled at, and dropped them from the menu. There is nothing wrong with seeing strengths and weaknesses and pivoting. My reputation, however, is not built on technique alone. I have excellent customer service (& being humble) & THAT goes a very long way. If you are rude or cold, and you do an excellent spray tan – you can not be successful or keep clients. I am warm, accepting & for any mistake I have made (because there will be mistakes made along the way- trust this!!) I fix them, free of charge, and offer some kind of compensation for the trouble of having to come back in. Excellence in craft/technique and excellence in customer service are important, together.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I’ve had to unlearn is always putting the customer first- kind of. I always thought I had to be cheaper than everyone else (to be affordable to my clients) and that I needed to say yes and book appointments whenever I could. While getting started, having lower prices was GREAT for bringing clients in, I do not regret that…but in order to grow, I had to raise prices. The best in town should never also be the cheapest in town. It does not mean you HAVE to charge the most- you should not strive to charge the most…but when you are good, when you’ve put in the work & taken the classes & are truly excellent in your field- you are cutting yourself short when you do not raise prices to reflect your hard work. Theres a fine line though- having the highest pricing right off the bat when you begin is arrogant & will prevent you from getting clients. Pricing is something that was hard to unlearn. The second part was saying yes to every appointment request and working every day all the time, just to accommodate the client. In saying no to a request, you do not owe an explanation of why you are not working a Friday evening, just a “no” is sufficient, followed by a time or day when you CAN fit them in! I don’t let anyone make me feel guilty for not coming in special for them, and I recommend other friends in the industry when someone needs a tan on a day I’m not in. Putting the customer’s needs first is so important when they are with you- but you also need to put your needs first above all, and make sure you are valuing your own time!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.KatherineWoodwardBeauty.com
• Instagram: @KatherineWoodwardBeauty @TheBumpits

Image Credits
Dani Lacey, Tonya Riggs, Hailey Pokorny, Bridgett Reid