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

Brianna , appreciate you joining us today. Any thoughts about whether to ask friends and family to support your business. What’s okay in your view?

As far as asking friends or family to support your business, i think it’s a great idea. I just wouldn’t dwell on it if they chose not to. Always remember that no one is obligated to support and just because they don’t doesn’t mean they’re being shady. I think it’s important to always focus on the ones who do show up for you and support you rather than who isn’t liking, commenting or sharing your work. If you have the supportive friends & family, i would allow them to support you! In the beginning i felt bad taking money from my family no matter what service i did even if it took me hours. Definitely let them pay you because they just want to support you. Even if you don’t have friends or family to support you, there will always be a million others ready to support you. My most loyal clients were once strangers to me! I now consider them friends & like family.

Brianna , 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 Brianna “Bri” Canizalez. I am 25 years old and a mother of one gorgeous babygirl named Zariah and the owner of Baddie Brows N Lashes. I graduated from Paul Mitchell San Antonio and have been a licensed esthetician since the end of 2019. I immediately jumped into starting my business right after school. I never would’ve imagined i would take this path but this was definitely the path for me. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I was a server since i was 18 years old & couldn’t see myself having a “big girl” job because i felt so much anxiety with interviews, but i just wasn’t in the right industry for me. Two of my friends had graduated from Paul Mitchell and said they liked it so i figured there was no reason to not try it out. I had no idea that starting school would be the beginning of my journey and i would fall in love with it all. Throughout the six months of school, you learn and start to figure out what services you enjoy doing the most. I gravitated towards brows and body waxing which are my top services today. I also offer permanent makeup, facials, trainings and body sculpting. I love that so many girls trust me with their services especially because a lot of us have had traumatic experiences putting trust in someone else and getting burnt or our eyebrows thinned out. I also love that i can create a safe comfortable space for girls to come in and relax and get serviced and just take a break from the outside world. Giving them the mirror at the end of the service is my favorite part. I’ve had girls give me hugs after & even cry after their brow services because they didn’t think their brows had potential. I love to see them walk out feeling themselves with their fresh brows. I’ve created special relationships with my clients and i am blessed to be apart of their lives during the good, bad and ugly. I think what sets me apart is my brows have their own signature look because it’s my own style. I didn’t train with anyone for brow laminations, it was just trial and error that created my own style. I put my all into every single service that i do & do the best i can. I now get to train others in my city & surrounding cities which is a blessing. I’ve always worked to be the best regardless of the task and i think my business benefits from that. I have my days or even weeks where I just need a break just like anyone else but i always get back on track. It’s important to stay resilient and remember why you started in the first place. I’m proud of the fact that i’ve kept my business going through covid and through becoming pregnant & having a premature baby. I had to take a lot of breaks but i never stopped. Even when i couldn’t take any appointments, i found other ways to still keep my business going & continue to grow.

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

I spent my last $500 on a wax warmer, a mag lamp, facial bed, and other brow supplies. I bought a cheap henna kit off of amazon and started doing $25 facials from home. With that $500 i bought the supplies i needed and began to offer highly discounted services so that i could start gaining clientele and getting content and build my portfolio. Some of my clients have been with me since the very beginning when i was doing those facials and brows out of my living room. I am definitely proud and grateful that i was able to turn that $500 into the business i have today.!

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

I would say just being consistent with good results. A lot of clients will tell me when they come in that they did their research on finding the perfect brow artist for them and part of that was looking for the consistency of the artists work. They might have found others that had good work but they weren’t obsessed with all of their work and that’s okay! So consistency and good customer service. You can have all the talent but if you’re not nice or appreciative of your supporters, then you’ll have a bad reputation instead of a good one.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/baddiebrowsnlashes?igshid=NTdlMDg3MTY=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/baddiebrowsnlashes?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Other: BOOK: https://square.site/book/ND4PF7SC3CZ9A/baddiebrowsnlashes-san-antonio-tx