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

Taryn , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

Pictures being highly edited I feel like in these days being a bridal/beauty make up artist can be challenging due to social media. With that I mean that clients expectations can sometimes be unrealistic due to filters and high editing. So for me as a make up artist, I try to keep my pictures as realistic as possible. I do not edit them. I post, mainly images straight from my phone ,I want to give my clients realistic expectations. So when you see influencers and or celebrities online, all of that is so highly processed if you will. As far as filters and editing goes.

Taryn , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I believe I was inspired due to social media. When social media came quickly onto the scene, I immediately started following lots of make up artists and hairstylist and fashionistas, etc. I have always loved make up but I never knew that I had a niche for make up. So I literally just started to self teach. And throughout the years of course, I have taken several online courses from some celebrity make up artist that used to offer them, and I have been solely self-taught. I think that if you have that eye of what looks good and you work off of that you will be successful. If you don’t have that eye for the trends, then you’re going to struggle. You can teach make up to anyone but their perception and their eye for detail or their eye for what looks good is some thing you can’t really teach so if they don’t have that I don’t know how you would be successful

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

As my children were getting older, I was able to focus more outside of the house and slowly, but surely I’ve built my business. I have now been working for over 10 years as a Makeupartist and a Ventura County/Santa Barbara area. I started out thinking this was just going to be some pocket money for myself, and it has turned into an actual wonderful business that I created. I get to create beautiful make up on beautiful women of all walks of life, share their stories, share their struggles and share mine as well. It’s inspiring to know that just being inspired from social media I have found another career outside of motherhood.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In the first few years of starting out doing make up, I wanted to work here at the local Ventura Mac counter. I thought that I brought a natural glam luck to Mac. And I felt they were lacking that. And with the trends and the way the trends were going in Ventura reallly needed a make up artist at the Matt counter like that guy did interviews and brought models and pass the test. I was offered a job. It fell through due to some unexpected circumstances, but looking back I am so glad because I was able to then just focus on my own business and I am able to make a lot more money make my own schedule and it’s just been wonderful.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.glamwithtaryn.com
• Instagram: Glamwithtaryn
• Yelp: Glamwithtaryn, Taryn Reed

Image Credits
Jess and James photography