We were lucky to catch up with Katelyn Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katelyn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

I was a product of the generation that was pushed towards college, no matter what. I don’t regret the time I spent in college; I made lifelong friendships and learned a lot of non-academic life skills, and it allowed me to start my life with a good salary as a software engineer.

But only 5 years post-graduation I was already burnt out of my industry, because it was not where my true passions lay.

I had always wanted to be some kind of artist. I was naturally artistic, and won many awards at a young age. I wanted to be a graphic designer, and later that turned into a tattoo artist. But I was told “I was too smart for that”.

So I stayed in my job I hated until I found out about permanent makeup, and it just resonated with my soul.

I think there needs to be more of a focus in school on finding a match with a student’s interests to a career. There are so many options out there that I didn’t know existed when I was in school. Money is important, but finding something you can do for the rest of your life that you honestly enjoy is more important.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi, I’m Kat Smith, owner of KVLT Beauty.

I provide many services which include: permanent makeup (specifically powder brows), tooth gems, teeth whitening, and saline tattoo removal.

As for my backstory – I suffer from trichotillomania, which is a form of OCD hair pulling. By age 20 I had practically no eyebrow hair left. I discovered permanent makeup and got my own brows done and it was LIFE CHANGING. Previously I was always too self conscious to leave the house without spending at least 20 minutes drawing brows on with a dull pencil, and the freedom I felt afterwards was amazing.

That feeling led me to taking my first permanent makeup course in February 2020. I was on top of the world, starting my new business. Then a short month later, the pandemic hit. At the time I was living in San Diego, and California shut down all body art practices for almost a full year.

That’s how my tooth gem empire was born. There were no legal barriers in place to prevent me from doing house calls, which is where I started. I practiced careful sanitation and masking techniques, and no COVID was transmitted during that season of my business, which I am grateful for.

The popularity of tooth gems exploded and I quickly rose to the #1 google result for tooth gems in my area. After about a year I started my training academy and online supply store, then launched my own line of 18K gold tooth gems.

At the beginning of 2022 I moved to Atlanta and have been building the service side of my business from scratch all over again.

My tooth gem training academy is still running strong, and I pride myself on being one of the most affordable courses in the industry while still providing a quality education. I know the beauty industry is full of “get rich quick” schemes and trainers just in it for the money, and I wanted to be part of the solution, not the problem. I offer life long support and continuing education to my students – what I know, they know.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I definitely had to unlearn the competitive mindset. My background is in tech, which is male dominated and everyone is always trying to one-up each other.

Something I always heard repeated in the beauty industry was “collaboration not competition” and it took a long time for me to understand what it truly meant.

The gist of it is changing your mindset from “other artists are stealing my clients” to “there are enough clients to go around for both of us”.

You will always attract your clients for different reasons, whether it be your style, aesthetic, personality, etc. The ones who come to you will be your dream clients, the ones you really want to work with.

If you think about it, there are always 3 gas stations on every corner. Targets next to Walmarts. McDonalds next to Burger Kings. Yet they all stay in business. You will too! Support and raise up your business colleagues.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Starting my own line of gold charms is probably the hardest thing I’ve done in my business to date. It probably took about a year from initial idea to execution!

The push to get it done was started by my mentors Victoria Racca (@victoriaglam) and Carla Ricciardone (@sculptedstudios) through the Pretty Rich Bosses program. They helped me figure out sourcing, negotiation, legalities, importing, all the ugly details of the process.

It took me a very long time to find a vendor that was able to create what I had envisioned, something I was not prepared for. To be honest, I went with the first one that could actually make them! Ideally I would have liked to shop around, but the product they provided was exceptional quality and still allowed me to have competitive prices.

My biggest piece of advice would be – be patient, and don’t expect everything to come together quickly or according to plan. Keep your standards high and don’t compromise! And make sure you have protections in place so your ideas and designs don’t get stolen. Some factories are notorious for using your designs to create a generic product to sell under their own name.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kvltbeauty.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/kvltbeauty
• Facebook: facebook.com/kvltbeauty

Image Credits
Photo of me by Delaney Mamer @spellbound_curiosities