We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aymee Hernandez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aymee below.
Aymee, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.
Hindsight is 20/20, and I’d believe in myself, my skillset and talents much more if I were to start over. I would have taken more one-on-one classes with professionals I admired in the field, and I certainly would have asked more questions. When I enrolled in beauty school in 2006, the beauty industry wasn’t the billion dollar industry that it is today. I should have ignored the nay-sayers and gone head-first into my field, but alas, here we are. Perspective is everything, and though I certainly would’ve made a few changes, I think the path I took led me to appreciate where I am much more than had I gone about it differently.
Aymee, 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?
I am a hair & makeup artist first, and event planner second. My passion for my field began very early on as a child. I was that little girl that fell in love with makeup and hair by the time I was in elementary school. My Barbies were all bald, courtesy of my “salon”, and even the baby dolls I’d play with were known to sport bold sharpie and pen eyeliner and lip liner. I carried this love for it into my teens, and now it’s my everything. I could be dead tired and still wake up at 5am for a wedding or a shoot. I specialize in natural glam, meaning my goal is to enhance YOUR beauty, not change your structure or who you are. Makeup can do that, sure, but I want to see the inner beauty reflected on the outside. In addition to beauty, event planning has always been something I loved doing. From the chaos to the end result, it’s a fun challenge for me. I’ve been a wedding hair & makeup artist for over 6 years, and I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I wanted to bring that knowledge with me to events, which also meant bringing my favorite vendors along for the ride. Planning gives me a tremendous creative outlet that I get to share with my partner in crime, and cousin, Jackie. We combined our skills and talents – beauty and skincare – and fused it with event planning. Thus, Pretty Personal Events & Skincare was born.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
That I don’t know everything, and even when I’m really close and know a lot, mistakes are still going to happen. So now I collect myself when I see that I’m getting ahead of myself, and I reel it back in. I’ve also learned to bite my tongue, even when I know I can deliver.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Funding has been a challenge because both Pretty Personal and my freelance hair and makeup are self-funded. I am a teacher by profession, so that has been a tremendous help when it comes to funding product, materials, and even furniture. Everything has been 100% out of pocket. We have a applied for business grants, but they’re incredibly difficult to receive, so we just keep on trucking and re-investing into our business.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.prettypersonal.events
- Instagram: prettypersonal_fl
- Yelp: Pretty Personal Events & Skincare
- Other: The Knot – Pretty Personal Events & Skincare