We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Heather Arnold. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Heather below.

Heather, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Makeup artistry is my second career. I had always worked until I gave birth to my twin sons 24 years ago. At the time I decided to stay at home so that I could focus on being a mom, ending a three year stint as a pharmaceutical rep. I really enjoyed my job but felt that I would be spreading myself too thin if I tried to raise twins and work at the same time,

Once my son’s entered high school, I found myself with a lot more time on my hands. My husband encouraged me to go back into the workforce because he knew how much I enjoyed having a career before kids and thought it would give me more balance, Well, I had no idea what I was going to do because I knew I did not want to work in a structured environment. I wanted to have flexibility so that I could still be around when my son’s returned from school and always enjoyed going to watch their extra curricular activities.

So my husband asked me one simple question, “what are you passionate about”? And that is when I decided that I had to take a risk and try my hand at makeup artistry. Here I am 10 years later, and I am still at it and absolutely love it!

Heather, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a makeup artist in the San Diego area providing light hair styling as well. I specialize in photo ready makeup for branding, head shots, family and maternity photography. I also specialize in bridal makeup and have bridal hair stylists that work on my team.

I also represent Trish McEvoy cosmetics as a freelance artist once a month.

I have taken an abundance of makeup and hair courses over the past two years to support my full time freelance business,

I am most proud of my ability to make the inner beauty of my clients shine outwardly. I love enhancing my client’s best features.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Duriing Covid I was layed off by the makeup brand I was working for. This was a blessing in disguise because I made me realize that freelance artistry could be my full time job if I put the work in. This meant taking more artistry courses so that I could up level my skill set and gain the confidence to focus on my own business.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started my IG account the summer of 2018. And four years later I am about to reach 1400 followers. This has been a grass roots effort, At the time I had not idea how to “do” social media. My friend suggested I hire the person who was helping her with Social Media. This was a game changer. She taught me the importance of posting consistently, engaging consistently and how to set up a nice looking feed so that I could act as my portfolio if people did not want to go to my website.

My biggest tip is to create an editorial calendar where you map out your posts for the month. You can then either post them with a scheduling app or post manually. This takes the stress out of deciding what to post the morning or night before. You can also map out your feed nicely by planning ahead.

Contact Info:

• Website: beautybyheatherarnold.com
• Instagram: @beautybyheatherarnold
• Facebook: Beauty by Heather Arnold
• Other: Google Page Beauty by Heather Arnold

Image Credits
Meg Marie Photography on my photo Dondee on photo one and two of models and Ian Temple on photo 3 and 4