We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Belindaa Rosee a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Belindaa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

As we all know being successful doesn’t just happen overnight. In my case there was many many tears involved, so much hard work, and sleepless nights. Oh! And I can’t forget…so much money spent. A lot of my success has to do with me waiting patiently for my time AND I still am. Let me elaborate for you, I’m a mother of 2 and a wife, my time being a stay at home mom with kids who have special needs obviously required me to stay with them and take them to their therapies, to be present and care for my son who continues to have surgeries till this day! Obviously my focus is on my kids always and they come first as well as my husband. I took care of them and everyone else around me whether it was mentally, emotionally and financially if I was able to. I started freelancing in makeup back in 2016/2017 and doing that helped so much with whatever needs we needed. I couldn’t further my career as much because I had to focus on my family first. But if push ever came to shove I was always quick to figure out how to make fast money for us and that’s all that mattered at that moment. My husband is such a great and hard working provider for us and it always felt so good to help him out! I’m being transparent with you who read this. Because everyone seems to have this false narrative in their head that “no one should struggle if they have a man working” but that’s completely false. Everyone struggles and sometimes we don’t have it all together, things happen and it’s real life! Don’t be ashamed to struggle because it’s real life, but I digress…with every opportunity I wanted to take I always took 2 steps back because I couldn’t fulfill these amazing things being a stay at home mom. Who’s going to take care of my kids? Who’s going to take them to therapy? Their appointments? Etc. I definitely didn’t want to depend on anyone else doing that and didn’t want to miss a part of it. So the best decision for me to make was to continue being a stay at home mom and make money by freelancing when I was able to. All this continued for so long until recently. My kids are in school now, im able to find time to do makeup video, tutorials etc. So I did that, it wasn’t until my video went viral on tiktok and that’s when the opportunities started to literally fill up my email. I was so overwhelmed and so so scared. All I ever knew was to be a mom and a wife and take care of them. I didn’t know how to present myself or how to start. But I took the risk I took the chance and little by little I’m scaling up and getting noticed by many amazing brands and working with them. Although I’m so grateful for the amazing opportunities and will always be. Something in me wasn’t satisfied, I wanted more. So recently I wanted to enroll in something that will take up a lot of time and money but I was ready for it and excited because it’s something I really really want to do. Then BOOM something comes up with my son which will cause what I’m doing to be put on a hold. And hey, he’s my son I’ll do anything to completely meet his needs especially medically. In this case…medically. I’ve cried so much and even felt selfish for thinking “when will I do something for me, when will it be my time”. I hate feeling that way because a mother should always be there for her kids and not be mad for putting a hold on her career. But the flesh in me is tired of wondering “what am I really going to do with my life? What am I going to be when I grow up?” Yes even at 30 years old. So I stopped feeling sorry for myself and took a chance on me and just went for whatever I wanted, I started doing makeup in a suite, I’m now teaching 1 on 1 makeup classes which have been going so good thank God, I’m working with some of the top makeup brands in the industry and I’m taking more risks. I’m gradually scaling up and I’m still waiting because this is not all I want. I want more. I started scaling up because I took chances and risks and stopped being fearful of the what ifs. I stopped presenting myself as just a mom and a wife and finally started to see who I really am. I’m talented, I’m beautiful, I’m smart, brave, courageous, and I’m more than enough. Although there’s soooo many more details to my story but I wanted to really highlight the fear I had, the only way to scale up is to be fearful and take those risks. I can’t thank my husband enough for supporting me every step of the way, our schedules work perfectly and I’m able to do it all on my own time because I’m my own boss. I can’t wait for our future blessings ahead because as I mentioned I want more and I’m not done yet!

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

Getting into the industry I’m in required a lot of videos. Such as makeup tutorials, TikToks, even Facebook lives. (A lot of Facebook lives) all this was to get noticed, to get recognized by these amazing makeup brands. I’d come up with new viral makeup looks etc. I’d give tips on how to help you achieve a makeup look you wanted to learn. Im super proud of all that I do, because what may sound like it’s easy. It’s not! It’s a lot of work and being that I suffer from constant mood changes in a matter of 5 minutes I’m really proud of myself for pulling through every single time I work. What I want you to know about me is that I genuinely try! I try my best, I work so hard to make you happy and that I’m forever and always will be so grateful for anyones support. I do it with love and gratitude.

How did you build your audience on social media?

My key advice is to be consistent. Post everyday 2X a day maybe 3. Interact with your followers give them entertainment. Believe it or not I’m still trying to build up my social media, it’s definitely not easy! Especially if you’re like me…you see, the likes and follows don’t really mean much to me I never even check who likes my post. I’m more of a post and get off type of person. But recently I’m noticing makeup brands or brands in general wanting to work with you only if you have a certain amount of followers. To me, that’s always been crazy because there’s so many amazing talented artist who deserve recognition and don’t get it because of their following. So it’s caused me to check my following and I barely noticed I’ve been at the same number on my Instagram for 2 years now😳 that was a shocker. So my advice is only to be consistent but to not tire yourself either. You’re talented with or without the followers.

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

This is a good one. Here’s what I learned. Business is business, friends and business don’t mix, family isn’t always your best support team, most “friends” don’t really support you. Scared money don’t make no money, money helps but it isn’t happiness, and this isn’t easy. The backstory is what I just said…you gotta go through it to know.

Contact Info:

• Website: StyleSeat.com/belindaarosee1
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belindaarosee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belinda.justin.37
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC8h7GQww63kPrE6y_yryOpw

Image Credits
Photographer is @sunshineshotssatx on Facebook and Instagram.