We recently connected with Selena Figueroa and have shared our conversation below.

Selena, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

In my opinion the educational system is set up for us to work when we graduate. When I was in high school the agenda was to push everyone to go to college. I went to college because that is what my peers and professionals were moving towards. I have two immigrant parents who don’t know much about college, they just always wanted me to succeed. I couldn’t go to them for much advice about college, because they had minimum knowledge about it. When everyone around me was talking about furthering their education, I was aiming towards the same thing. Looking back now, the first red flag was not even knowing what I wanted to study. I went from criminal justice to early childhood education because I was so indecisive. Soon after that I knew that early childhood education was something I did not want to do. It wasn’t until I was in college when I started doing more makeup on others. Once I left college and came home that is when I started doing makeup under my own business. I say all that to say this, one thing I would change about the education system to help prepare for a fulfilling career is to push trades out there as much as college is thrown out to everyone. Nowadays people have been getting trades with little to no debt and have been in a great and abundant career. If I would have had a little more information about getting into cosmetology or esthetician school I do feel like I would be a little further along than where I am now.

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.

Well my name is Selena Figueroa. Owner of now Selena’s Glam Agency LLC, formerly Lena’s Beats LLC. Born and raised in the small town of Greensboro, GA. I graduated from the Greene County High School in May of 2014. After graduating high school, I did go to college for 2.5 years. Not knowing what it was that I wanted to do, I decided to come home. I am currently working and have been employed with the Greene County E911 Center for 4 years now, and recently completed an Emergency Medical Responder course. I take appointments for make-up when I am not working. I have been doing makeup consistently since 2017. I got my business license in 2021. After doing my own make-up for a while, the people that I work with are what drew me in. I have a big heart for helping others, and I started building relationships with clients. The more that I did make-up, the better I got, which led me to receiving more inquiries so I kept it going. I enjoy being there for my clients and making people feel good about themselves. The diversity in my clients is what sets me apart from others in this field. I have worked with a wide range and welcome any age, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, disability and sexual orientation. One of my goals in business is to specialize in more services. I also want to own my own beauty salon. I would love having my own salon so that I can also open it up for others who work in the same field. Overall, my goals are to grow and be more efficient in my business operation, increase my clientele and profits, and to constantly improve my skills.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Being authentic has been the most effective strategy for me in growing clientele. I think that being yourself will get you through doors you can’t even imagine. People will love you for who you genuinely are, and if they don’t, then they simply are not for you. I am who I am everywhere I go.. on and off the internet as well. I am not perfect, but I will never pretend to be someone or something that I am not.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I believe that we all go through things on a daily basis where we have to show resilience. As a self taught make-up artist I can say that I’ve gone through a lot in my journey to where I am today. I didn’t always have a booking site with my own policies. Clients would cancel and no call no show all the time. I had to start somewhere, therefore not all of my clients had the perfect glam. That itself affects your reputation. At some point I agreed to take on more clients in one setting such as weddings. If no one teaches you how to handle weddings, then you’re pretty much learning as you go. Weddings can be real complex from having to travel, packing, loading/unloading equipment and products, to having a time frame for a certain amount of faces that need to be done, to dealing with different emotions and personalities, it can be a lot. One of my first few weddings taught me how to have structure and boundaries because I was running out of time, makeup was being rushed, not really allowing me to do the best that I can, so it pushed me to be greater. Now I have a booking site, and a contract for weddings as well. I don’t run into too many issues now that I have these in place.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://selenasglamagency.simplybook.me/v2/
• Instagram: @selenasglamagency
• Facebook: Selena’s Glam Agency

Image Credits
Photo Credits go to Marlown Mapp, Jarvis Merritt, & Telly Brown.