Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kaya Chyla. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kaya, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

Social media is something that business owners need to accept for optimal growth. I run my own social media, and I see many others in my age group or older struggling with the idea of it.

I do know a couple of beauty business owners that do not have a social media at all, and are fully booked. So it’s definitely possible to have a full list of
clients and no socials, as the biggest marketing for beauty professionals is still word of mouth.

However, if you have dreams to step out from behind the chair or bed and get into teaching, products, or anything that expands beyond just doing services, it’s non-negotiable to have a social media.

I do run my own, and it’s not easy. At its core, learning how to do posts, learning what catches attention is something you can sit down and learn, and it’s pretty straightforward.

The hard part is I’m also still actually doing the services on people. I’m fully booked all day long so the little time I have left in the day is not quite enough to go full force with social media.

My Instagram and Tik Tok are both under the handle “PrettyLashBae” , and you can see that there’s some effort put into there with presentation. But you can also tell it’s not quite exactly the type of content that’s going super mega viral consistently. And the interesting part is I know how to make that type of content, but the mental and physical energy after servicing clients all day every day just isn’t quite there.

This is something I’ve been struggling with for almost the past entire year. I’ve considered cutting back my open hours, raising my prices, or anything that might be able to free up an extra hour or two in the day to focus on creating the type of content that I know will take my business to the next level.

I am offering business mentorships, selling lash adhesive, tweezers, and all these other things with the main goal of not spending entire days lashing in the future. I want to hire someone to lash under me and expand, so it’s pertinent that I create amazing content that builds an audience.

So what does one do in this situation? I think a lot of business owners get stuck in this spot as well. My main advice is that if you are not completely fully booked yet as a beauty business owner, now is the best time to practice content making and get really good at it.

Any free spots you have between clients please use that time to learn how to create great content- watch tutorials, watch YouTube videos, replicate great content that you see online…anything to practice. Because once you’re fully booked the amount of energy it’s going to take to learn how to create, let alone execute, is going to be overwhelming.

Some people in this scenario choose to just handover their social media to an agency or company, and I genuinely understand why. At most, I want to hire some version of a Santina (if you’re on TikTok and you follow Dr. Miami you know exactly who I’m talking about) because I think it would be way easier for someone to just tell me what content to make and then I can just do it.

Personally, to hire a full agency or company, I feel like it may take the personal touch out of everything that I’m posting. Even if I’m filming my own content, handing it over for someone else to edit and post- there’s just some sort of disconnect that I don’t want to have with my audience that I’ve built so far.

Ultimately, it’s up to each business owner to decide what’s best for them. You can continue to try to manage it yourself, but it gets extremely overwhelming, and takes away from other aspects that you need to execute for your business. You can choose to bring someone on to at least film some stuff, or give some ideas or come up with a plan for you. And lastly, you could choose to fully handover everything. Whichever feels the most right to you is
the right choice.

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

PrettyLashBae services both lash clients, as well as lash artists and anyone in the beauty service industry.

For lash clients, I heavily focus on giving a great lashing experience and helping people find their favorite lash mapping for themselves. Clients will experience a private clean studio space, a very comfy bed, and great vibes. I’m willing to adjust what we’re doing with your lashes as many times as you need with each fill to figure out what lash style you prefer the most.

As much as I can use my professional knowledge to give someone the “best” lash mapping for their face, sometimes it may not be what the client likes on themselves. I love nothing more than to help people find their style.

On the business side, I am selling lash adhesive, tweezers, and client gifts on my website www.prettylashbae.com. I always had a frustrating time buying glass adhesive, and when I looked further into the industry, I realized that a lot of times the lash adhesive we are being sold isn’t super fresh, or it was stored in properly, or just unfortunately impacted by weather conditions.

My aim is to supply the freshest lash adhesive possible to lash artists. I order in small batches, and include manufacturing and expiration dates so people are well aware how fresh the adhesive is and when to expect it to start to expire. Once the lash adhesives I have on hand reach around month four, I sell them at a discount to help get them off the shelf before the six month expiration and allow enough time for the lash artist to actually use it.

My goal with my products is to allow lash artists to feel confident with the products that they’re using so that they can focus on actually building clientele and their businesses. I had a crazy adventure trying to figure out which products to use when I first started and it was a roller coaster of tweezers not grabbing the hairs, the hair feeling too plastic, the lash adhesive being spoiled as soon as I opened it, etc. and as a new beauty business owner this can be very discouraging because all your energy is spent on trying to handle product situations instead of doing what you need to do to start making a profit. I want to ease that for people.

As soon as I hopped into the lash industry, I quickly built a full roster of clientele and a couple years later quickly realize that this was not the norm. I backtracked to try to understand why I was able to build a client roster so quickly, and wrote an ebook called ”Get Booked, Stay Busy”. It covers my whole lash journey and I think it offers a lot of great tips for people entering the beauty industry. This serves not just lash artists, but anyone.

From there, I’ve eased into beauty business mentorships. I had a viral series going on TikTok for a while, where I would audit peoples Instagram, and give them advice on how to present better to help increase client bookings. Now I offer 12 weeks of 24/7 communication and a plan week by week to help get people going with clientele or help any goals that they may have.

I spend the majority of my days lashing clients all day long, providing as many tips and advice for beauty business owners as I can on Tik Tok, and servicing my beauty mentorship clients. It’s extremely fulfilling, as I want everyone to experience the freedom of running your own business.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

In the beauty industry, the number one way to get new clients is word-of-mouth. I believe Boulevard did a study recently where they interviewed a bunch of people about how they find new beauty businesses and that was the conclusion.

I built my clientele initially by pricing myself what my work was actually worth. I didn’t come out the gate charging full pricing because that wouldn’t make any sense. My work wasn’t the best in town, I was a little slower, and the presentation of the decor in my room wasn’t quite presentable for high pricing.

This lower pricing upon entry into the industry quickly got me many clients that maybe were afraid to try lashes , scared by the price etc. I gave them an opportunity to try them without that much coming out of their wallet. A handful of those clients continued to come back because they enjoyed the experience and ended up liking getting lashes done.

After that, at the time I moved into Facebook ads, built a few more clientele there, and eventually, when I felt good about the services, I moved onto Yelp. Yelp was a huge boost for me, but I don’t recommend people get on there until you’re confident with the services you provide. The last thing you want to do is not be completely ready and because of that, receive anything less than five star reviews.

Then I really focused on my social media. Most recently I’m really trying to present as best as I can on my social media because it absolutely makes a huge difference. Even if clients find you through yelp or any ads you might run, the first thing they’re going to do is look you up on Instagram. Instagram is like your business card. If they’re not impressed, get put off, or end up confused, they will absolutely choose someone else over you.

I don’t have as much time as I would like to dedicate to my social media, to present it in the way that I dream of, but I’m working to try to find some pockets of time to execute it the way I would like.

I still have a ton of word-of-mouth new clients, and that largely is because the current clients I have had a good experience with me. So it’s important to service your clients as best as possible so that they can start recommending you.

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

My Instagram truly needs my full effort and I’m working to give it all the attention it needs- my TikTok has a larger following. The number one thing to understand is that people want to receive value.

My most viral series was the one where I was doing Instagram audits on other beauty businesses. I received so many requests that I couldn’t even keep up and the amount of effort it took became overwhelming. I started charging a little bit, and people started paying- those types of videos offered value for people.

But value doesn’t have to be educational. You can offer value by means of entertainment, or by stories. My path just happened to be educational.

If you have not dived into social media, and you are a business owner, please dedicate time to do that this year. The bar keeps raising and raising with social media content, and I’ve seen it change before my very own eyes.

For example, within the beauty industry, simply having an aesthetic before and after of clients, having a pretty room to work in (and posting it) was enough to get you booked over other people in your area.

Now, the bar is raised even higher, where the biggest-following beauty
business accounts (or the ones that would get the most attention in any given area) are the ones that use a professional camera and hire models to perform services on. Most of them don’t even post their actual clients anymore.

So now is the time to learn to create content to be able to keep up. Within the next couple of years, it’s going to get to the point where the most successful people are the ones that can afford the professional filmers and editors behind their content creation. More and more beauty business owners are acquiring the skills themselves, or starting to incorporate professionals. You may as well try to learn everything yourself right now to keep up.

Ultimately, I mentioned that it’s possible to be a successful beauty business owner without any social media. But if you have bigger dreams and goals with your business, it’s necessary. And I would highly recommend starting to create content now and getting through the bad content phase as soon as possible, so that you can learn how to present yourself as best as you can so that when the bar keeps raising higher, you can keep up.

Provide value via entertainment, stories, education. Use proper lighting to prevent poor quality videos. Watch YouTube videos on filming, and what angles are interesting to look at and watch, as well as editing tips to keep the interest of viewers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://prettylashbae.com/
• Instagram: PrettyLashBae
• Other: Tik Tok: PrettyLashBae