We were lucky to catch up with LaTasha Benn recently and have shared our conversation below.

LaTasha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How has Covid changed your business model?

Love Your Beauty, LLC originally started as a makeup & skincare business. I started doing makeup in 2005 and became a licensed esthetician in 2012. At that point, I launched Love Your Beauty, LLC with a mission to encourage women to feel confident and beautiful with or without makeup. I focused on enhancing beauty versus covering it up and taught women skincare and natural makeup looks through my “Enhanced Beauty Workshops”. Although I was in the beauty industry, health and wellness was my primary focus for my business and personal life. So, when the COVID pandemic hit, I obviously was not able to perform makeup or skincare services. I had to change my business model somehow to bring in revenue during the pandemic. I thought about offering virtual makeup and skincare classes along with selling branded items – clothes, beauty accessories, and whatever else I could quickly put my logo on and sell. I thought apparel, specifically t-shirts would be the quickest and easiest product to offer, but as you know almost every other business owner was doing the same exact thing at this time. During that time, all I did was workout, which meant all I wore was athletic apparel, so I decided to sell sports bras instead of t-shirts. After seeing success in the sales of my sports bras, I added leggings, then came shorts, and then came workout tank tops and hoodies. Ultimately, I decided to rebrand Love Your Beauty as an athletic apparel and wellness brand. Instead of focusing on external beauty, I decided to pivot my focus to internal beauty and overall wellness while still encouraging women to feel confident and beautiful regardless of their body types. Mirroring my personal passion for health and wellness with my business was the best decision I made for Love Your Beauty!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Love Your Beauty, LLC is an athletic apparel and wellness brand designed to promote self-love, inner beauty, and women empowerment. Love Your Beauty was originally born in 2005 in Chicago, IL as a beauty business where I offered makeup and skincare services as well as taught classes.

Love Your Beauty has come a very long way since 2005 and so have I. After relocating to Tampa, Florida, “life-ing” through a pandemic, and undergoing an intentional healing journey, I decided to rebrand LYB as an apparel and wellness brand. Instead of focusing on external beauty, I decided to pivot my focus to internal beauty and overall wellness.

We all want to look and be our best to the public eye, but regardless of how good we look the beauty that exerts the most power lives internally. That means taking care of our mental and physical health; being confident in our beauty with or without makeup; and loving our body regardless of our size. These are lessons that I am constantly relearning. Just like most of us, I have dealt with physical and emotional experiences that have caused me to feel insecure and self-conscious. Heartbreak, adult acne, body dysmorphia, and weight loss issues, to name a few, have created feelings of inadequacy that had lived in me for many years. I used makeup and expensive clothes to cover up my insecurities and topped it all off with a blurred sense of happiness. This was not healthy and sustainable if I truly wanted to live a fulfilling life. I needed to be comfortable with my physical appearance the way it was. So, I chose to love every lump and curve of my body while still taking care of it. I found myself wearing athletic apparel every single day, not wearing makeup, and basking in the comfort of just being authentically me. This is why I chose to make the switch to athletic apparel. I want you to be comfortable while you journey to self-love and confidence.

Love Your Beauty currently offers a line of athletic apparel that includes hoodies, tank tops, sports bras, leggings, and shorts, as well as fitness equipment & accessories such as water bottles and resistance bands, which I like to call Love Your “Booty” Bands.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

I have thankfully been able to build off my previous clientele from when LYB was a beauty business – beauty and health/wellness tend to go hand-in-hand. People who care about looking good most likely care about feeling good. But, I also had to recognize that I am entering into a whole new industry. I’m not a personal trainer or even a fitness influencer, so the challenge was – how do I grow my clientele when I’m not a fitness pro or athlete? It’s still a work in progress, but the biggest impact has come from getting out into the community, by attending vendor markets and networking with small gym and fitness studio (yoga, pilates studios) owners. Getting my products in front of people, so they can see, touch, and try on my quality apparel has been huge for my business. Also, sharing more of myself and my fitness and health journey through social media has helped me grow my following and has given me more credibility.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I learned and am still learning is that everyone is not your customer. Having a specific audience has been key to almost every aspect of my business – from how I market my products, what material I source, what manufacturers I work with, etc. Being in a new industry, my initial goal was to sell to anyone that would buy from me. Of course, in the beginning, my customers consisted of my previous makeup clients, my friends, and my mom, but after those sales, my business stood at a standstill for a while and I felt like I was all over the place when it came to the content I put out on social media and even what events I attended. I ended up doing some market research to learn more about the athletic apparel industry and more importantly my audience – who my followers were, not my customers, but the people who subscribed to my website and followed my social media channels. I had to learn who they were (their demographics) and what they liked (their interests). Once I had this data I was able to provide my audience/followers with what they wanted and convert these followers into customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.loveyourbeautyllc.com
• Instagram: @loveyourbeauty_llc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loveyourbeautyllc

Image Credits
Professional photos taken by Ashlee Noelle Creative (IG: @ashlee_noelle_creative)