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

Irtashia, appreciate you joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I believe determination and focus are the key components of become successful. It takes perseverance and patience to stay focused. Most would say that’s easy to do. In all reality, if and when we have setbacks, that’s when we really realize that we have what it takes. Taking the time to examine why we had a setback or a failure is allowing us to have a learning moment. This is the perfect time to use those learning opportunities to be bigger and better than before. We must continue to remember why we started and what’s our end goal.

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

I started this journey due to having Crohn’s Disease and wondering what I could do to change my lesions and breakouts I was having during flares. I’ve always been a big advocate on skincare. After graduation, I became obsessed with corrective skincare. I studied and took multiple advanced treatment courses to explore a different elevation in esthetics. One of the biggest rewards that I get from being an esthetician is being able to help clients reach their healthy skin goals and being and inspiration to them and even my mentees. I absolutely love to increase a client’s confidence. Seeing a client’s skin transform so quickly is the best part outside of their smiling faces. Let’s see, what sets me apart from other esthetician’s… I stay in my on lane. I see no competition outside of myself therefore I’m not easily influenced to worry about beating out another skin therapist on products or services or social media popularity. I am proud to be as far as I have come. Not many people can say they’ve opened a business in the middle of a global pandemic and still thriving almost 2 years later. BleuReign Skin is my Safe Haven, my second child, if you will lol. A friend once said the sky and ocean are blue and are complexly limitless. That’s exactly how I think of my business… limitless. I can elevate and grow as much as I can. I believe you get out what you’ve put in and I can thank myself, clients and family for putting so much in- whether it was support, purchasing a product, sharing a post or just stopping by the spa to say hi, that all encouraged me to go harder. I am so proud of where I am today and thankful for the 2 mentees I have that are also thriving in this beauty industry. Seeing my teaching techniques work definitely confirms I’m in the right career. Everyday is a play date.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I built my clientele around my social media accounts, mainly through Instagram. I grew my audience by captivating them in reels, funny TikTok skits (with myself) and daily posts of my work on clients. These posts on my pages is what grew my audience organically. I can honestly say out of the 1100 followers, I have about 200 -250 that are my actual clients. I’ve never been big on followers but I have a reason why— having 10k followers don’t mean I will have 10k customers. I learned hashtags, popular local eateries, clubs or shops to use as locations therefore if people search for those locations, then BleuReign Skin will pop up in their feed. I would say step outside the box when it comes to social media. This is the one time you get to be silly by doing funny videos yet it’s strategic marketing in all demographics. A great play on words along with a photo can make your page visible to any and every one in the world and most importantly place you in the list for top esthetician’s when searched. Repetitive key for social media, posting even your “get ready with me for clients” can exemplify to non customers to want to visit your site and business.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My resilience comes from being a Crohn’s Disease patient. This is my 14th year of being diagnosed. My resilience has evolved throughout the years. Having this disease and being a service provider can be so difficult especially with health concerns, including viruses and germs. I have to ALWAYS be on caution mode as I work with clients because my immune system is compromised. One of the biggest challenges this past year was catching COVID -19. I caught the Delta variant last August. I was hospitalized for 7 days and not able to work for 23 days and even after 67 days, I still battled, what doctors called, “Long Covid”. It was a strain on my health, my lungs, respiratory system and still trying to work like everything was normal. I had to make a decision of closing 2 days week to give myself “rest” time. I had to learn how to rest my body and allow myself to heal with the breaks I’d have every week for 2 days. I’m grateful for my clients who understood the changes and that whey were in the best interest of us all. I had to remember that “ I couldn’t pour from an empty cup”. In order to provide the best care and service to my clients I had to scale back for a bit but it worked out so well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bleureignskin.com
• Instagram: @bleureignskin
• Facebook: @bleureignskin
• Other: TikTok Bleureignskin and same for styleseat

Image Credits
Branding Photo by Latrona Richardson + A’char Studios Collagen Photo by Vanessa Ortega Lash Extensions by Ashley Holiday MUA Allure Makeup by Nikki Hair by Ungie Jefferson Outfit by Bleu Rush Online