We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Randi Vought a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Randi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
One Saturday night I was out in Manayunk at this tiny, little dive bar. The Phillies were playing in the World Series and that meant there were literally four other people in the bar. This woman came over and started chatting with me, ended up being from Oregon and an owner of an all female cannabis brand and grow farm. We instantly connected and she soon became my client. After doing multiple services, she invited me to fly out to Vegas to glam her and her partner for her sponsored brand after party for the medical cannabis convention.
It was such a surreal experience; right when I landed we met everyone for a late dinner and drinks. I checked in and saw the incredible room and balcony. The entire next day was spent doing full hair and makeup, getting them ready for the big event! It was a long day, but when I arrived to the event it was absolutely incredible. From the lighting, the swings, the dancers and everyones outfits, it was intoxicating. I met so many people and made connections for a lifetime. This just goes to show, you truly never know who you’ll meet. Everything is an opportunity.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Randi! I’m 31 and am a Cancer sun, Leo moon, Scorpio Rising. I enjoy reading, hot yoga, hiking, making crafts, slowing down and being with loved ones. I have been in the beauty industry for 13 years. I specialize in all things glam– bridal hair and makeup, hair color, extensions, lashes, reiki, lessons, and more!
At a young age, I was drawn to beautiful things, always dabbling in makeup and hair and knew that this was what made my heart happy. I started my company, Make Me Sparkle, in 2015 with the intention of making my clients feel like their most beautiful selves. I started out in a tiny 180 square feet room in an open ceiling warehouse with one person on my team, to years later opening a storefront with 16 girls on my team. My goal of 2 weddings the first year turned into 100 weddings by year three. We won awards each year for Best of Weddings through Wedding Wire and the Knot and by year five we were selected for the Knot’s Hall of Fame!
Unfortunately, Covid hit and drastically affected our business. In addition to enduring all the new challenges and hardships that that came, I was involved in an incredibly toxic relationship that truly changed my entire life. I became very spiritual and found different modalities, such as Reiki, to help heal and process these life transitions. The healing was so profound that I wanted to spread the knowledge and empower women, which led me to enrolling in a program and becoming certified as a Reiki 2 practitioner. After completing that certification, I enrolled in a life coaching program that focuses on love, sex, and relationships. This new path encouraged me to take a completely new approach with the business and have been creating containers for clients to feel like their most high vibe self and focus on their inner beauty. Our redirection has transformed the entire vision and am so excited to see what the future holds!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The hardest lesson I’ve had to unlearn is what defines success. For years I focused on growing the business, the grind, how many new clients I could get, fitting everyone in, having no days off… I was running in a burnout cycle of working 7 days a week in the salon, doing weddings on weekends, and running the entire business solely by myself. Fast forward 9 years later, my entire lifestyle has changed as I redefined what success is. Success is having a balanced schedule, grounded presence and sense of peace, a regulated nervous system, discernment, speaking with kindness always, having a roof over my head, keeping my 65 house plants and dog alive and happy, having a network of humans that see me and support me. Success is having the craving to grow and evolve constantly. Success comes in so many forms and shouldn’t be measured <3
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
Covid was a tough time and brought out all different sides of people. For the wedding industry, what this meant was that each bride rescheduled their wedding dates at least twice at minimum and had to coordinate with all of their vendors for availability. We ended up getting double booked on the same day with two weddings. The first bride was having a backyard wedding, the second bride was at formal venue 25 minutes down the street. On paper, it looked doable and all we needed to do was tweak the schedule of the first bride to start just one hour earlier than originally planned in order for them to both flow smoothly.
Prior to emailing the first bride, I extinguished every option in trying to find an additional artist for the wedding so that we didn’t have to change the schedule, but every single person was booked. When I emailed her, I expressed my deepest apologies and offered to have her personal hair and makeup be complimentary as this was an error on our end. Not only was the bride not accepting of the offer, she responded very poorly and stated she would absolutely not start an hour earlier than planned. She deeply insulted myself, the business, and let me know it was a “clear oversight that could have been avoided”. Due to this inflexible stance, we were late to the second wedding. People often forget that service providers are still human and we do everything we can to remedy situations but some are just unavoidable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.makemesparklee.com
- Instagram: @makemesparklee
- Facebook: @makemesparklee
Image Credits
Wave Lane