We recently connected with Ti’Ara Benson and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ti’Ara, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our main goal is to help every person that we come in contact with. Whether that be through a service we perform or just giving our clients a safe place to relax in. We guarantee that while you’re getting serviced you are our main focus and that we address every concern. We want to make sure that you’re leaving feeling confident and beautiful. We understand how hard life can get and how hard it is to find time to pamper yourself. It’s also hard trying to love yourself so we want to help you on that journey.
Ti’Ara, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Ti’Ara Benson and I officially became a licensed esthetician in 2020, sadly in the time of a pandemic but everything works out how it’s supposed to.
I never thought I would be an esthetician until I was two years into a psychology and social work degree and realized it wasn’t where my heart was at. I loved the study of psychology but it didn’t fulfill me. I left college and joined esthetics school months later.
I never looked back even though fear stared me right in the face and I’m glad I didn’t. I get to help people fall back in love with themselves and it’s the best experience ever.
I get to work with professional product lines with amazing ingredients that not everyone can say they get the chance to work with.
Those product lines help me offer specialized treatments such as vagacials, peach facials, and other body treatments. I also offer full body waxing and once you start waxing you never turn back. The instant confidence alone makes the pain worth it.
I also get to help clients with ingrowns, acne, congested skin, and hyperpigmentation. The before and afters are always awesome to see.
I’m most proud and what I feel sets me apart is the safe space I provide for my clients. It’s not just an in and out service for me. It’s a relationship that I work hard to maintain and trust I work hard to build. I am sometimes my clients sounding board and I’m happy they trust me with their body, their mind, and their heart.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
The biggest lesson I feel I had to unlearn was what success meant to me.
It’s easy to look around on social media and what others are doing in the same industry and think wow I want to be like that, and for a while that was me.
The first year in business was a physical and mental battle. I was wanting the six figures and the fully booked clientele until I realized I needed to understand how I wanted to measure my success.
Not saying having those things are bad , but if I wasn’t careful I would chase those goals of just having anyone and everyone coming into my spa to say I was fully booked and making money instead of appreciating the now.
Now success to me is making the most of everyday. Taking time to appreciate every client that chooses me, refers friends and family to me, and use their hard earned money to support my business. Some days are $500 days and some are $0 days but we keep going.
It can get hard but if stop and think of the impact you leave on other people the money means less than nothing.
How did you build your audience on social media?
For the longest time I was terrified of putting my face on social media.
The social media world can be a cruel place and you never know who is going to say what.
Also the daunting fear of the post sitting on social media with no likes or views it can be disheartening but after a while I just had to grasp the fact that social media isn’t real.
I had a client come in and she had a big presence on social media and she said just go for it. Just start talking on your story and let people see you as a real person.
So I did. I would go on Instagram and tell people “ Goodmorning my beautiful people” and I still do that to this day. I’ll tell them about my day or random things I thought of and they could relate and I built those relationships.
I then started doing reels that related to esthetics with funny sounds and they slowly blew up after I started being consistent.
The only advice I can give is the advice that was given to me. GO FOR IT! As long as you like whatever you’re posting and you feel as though it’s authentic to you you will prosper.
Contact Info:
- Website: Booking- https://www.vagaro.
com/nelleesthetics - Instagram: @nelleesthetics
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@nelleesthetics