We were lucky to catch up with Celeste Gonzalez / Celesthestylist recently and have shared our conversation below.

Celeste, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

Life is constantly changing and as a business owner and educator to beauty pros, one of the most common struggles I see and have experienced is being willing to pivot and take risks to grow.

Growth and taking risks can seem challenging so today wanted to share ways that taking risks can help grow your business and change your life in amazing ways.

Social media can seem intimidating but it doesn’t have to be. Doing videos out of my phone as a beauty school student was scary. I was not only new to the beauty industry but at 30 years old enrolling into beauty school was also one of the oldest in my class.

Instead of judging and stopping myself because I was so new and my videos didn’t look like everyone else’s on social I started recording and sharing them.

This risk of putting the ego and fear aside and being willing to be uncomfortable led me to working with a brand as a paid educator in less than a year of being a licensed cosmetologist and got me published in different publications for a tutorial that went viral. This is not to brag is to share your own potential if you are willing to share your work, products or knowledge.

You must have dozens of videos / photos sitting on your phone camera roll. Maybe you don’t want to share them because is not perfect, or it doesn’t look like what everyone is posting.

Take the risk post your work so that your community and clients can find you. Being your own number one fan and sharing your work is what will grow your business. And can change your life in so many ways.

Like I’ve shared before owning a licensed mobile salon in California was my biggest challenge to date. I’m not an interior decorator or contractor lol but an idea and imagination is what drove it to become a reality.

Asking for help is important when you take risks. Just like with the mobile hired licensed contractors to help me with things I had no clue on, don’t limit your business and potential by thinking you have to do it all alone.

Risks can bring lessons from the “failures” of how to do something better and in time the rewards from doing the risky things that our mind limits us to think are not possible or good enough. Share your work.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a Latina mom of 3, becoming a business owner, coming into the beauty industry and becoming an educator was truly not planned. After being discriminated against at my old school office job and having going thru the court system seeking justice and the toll I took on me, I could no longer be in an office setting 9-5.

While being terrified of flying lol got on a plane to L.A. to go to a beauty con. In that beauty con I decided I would go to beauty school and wanted to be like the women I saw there. My own boss, with different streams of income and willing to share and be just me.

As a mom and Latina I wanted to empower other women like my little girls to learn more about beauty care at home but also uplift them to go after their own dreams and goals.

This is why I started educating, it was never to go viral, get publishings or to get all the beautiful opportunities like teaching on stage, and currently working with the Pinterest TV team as a Pinterest tv host.

It was truly to share with other women specially from my culture or mothers like myself that we are taught we can’t think about our wants and needs. We truly can have it all.

We can be mothers, successful business owners living a life that doesn’t rely solely on working first to live second.

Currently love working with clients doing on location bridal hairstyling, repairing damaged hair, educating my clients on hair and self care at home. Seeing their face after a service is the most beautiful thing I get to experience as a cosmetologist and business owner.

My other passion is educating and mentoring other beauty professionals and business owners. As a mentor I not only help them growing on social media but also using Pinterest a visual search engine to reach their clients and grow their income.

Having a podcast “Beauty Business Mind” is where I get to connect in both Spanish and English with my community and share the business and life lessons.

Giving back is very important to be and grateful to be part of Diversity Equity and inclusion committees to not only share my experiences but help make small changes on important issues using my brand voice and opportunities to do so.

Being a business owner is not only about serving ourselves but also giving back to our community.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Building an audience and having impact on social media doesn’t mean having 10k or 100k followers but more of sharing who you are, what makes your business different and why should others care. Let me explain..

Before you post or share something on social media remember is a tool for business not for popularity. Some of the posts I make get few likes but bring in bookings from clients. So instead of focusing on being popular or trendy I always focus on how can I help my ideal clients with a solution, how can I show my personality behind the scenes of my work and before I post I always ask myself why should they care and what benefit in the information is in it for them.

Those 3 questions have got me into doing consistent content the past 6 years. Although 3500 followers on Instagram may not be huge for most remembering that you can help one person with a post by making them laugh, learn something new, or get to know your story and perspective is what has transformed my business.

When I need clients I know what posts to share, making videos and social has become fun because is not a short game and being okay with having some hits and lots of misses on your content will get you more than waiting for the Perfect post.

A big piece of advise is use your free analytics tools on what ever your prefer social media platform is. It take s the guessing out of it and shows you what content your audience is actually interacting with.

People do business with people and being okay with knowing we are not for everyone and not every potential client is a right fit for me, keeps me going and hope this helps you as well.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

They say necessity is the mother of all inventions and I say not seeing lack but opportunity to use what you have is what makes it all possible.

Going to cosmetology school full time I didn’t work so we were down to one income. Without any income to spend on education or hiring out this is what you can do to fund your business.

Shadowing is a great way if you have the time to exchange work for experience.
I shadowed 5 salons in and outside my county to see what a commision, rental, salon owner, and hybrid business was like.

Not only was I able to do this for fre but got to learn skills for free from other successful businesses around my area.

Marketing I know can take up a lot of time and money if you don’t keep track of allocating your funds. I used what I had no ring light, microphone just my phone a Samsung at the time to start.

When you don’t have money to invest in skills learn from others that are where you one day want to be. I took advantage of free education on instagram lives for hair color education, marketing insights but most importantly using all the free resources around me to fund the marketing and education part of my business when I didn’t have funds to invest in it.

Products as beauty professionals can add up so lol here is another hot tip. For products brands that you truly love and use shout them out in your socials. Over time because I truly love the product would get PR packages of products which I would use on paying clients. It helps absorb the cost and you get to learn how to be a well versed product user and beauty professional.

Lastly, save more than you spend in your business. Having a savings account helped me during 2020 when we had the shutdowns pay for rent and eventually buy the vintage 1967 travel trailer that has become my mobile salon.

Repurposing and utilizing what you have rather than spending on the new shiny thing really has helped keep costs low and have a more profitable business.

So see where you have opportunities to diversify your income like being a consultant, paid educator, crating paid content for brands or teaching others your skills that you have honed.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.celestethestylist.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/celestethestylist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/celestethestylist
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@celestethestylist

Image Credits
Photographs working in mobile by : @brookebeasleyphoto Mobile salon & picture in salon chair by: @spiritedphotoandfilm