We were lucky to catch up with Yena Kim recently and have shared our conversation below.

Yena, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

This industry wasn’t so promising a few years ago. Now that PMU is so popular, we are oversaturated in this line of work which now is looked at like a hair stylist. But when I started about 3-4 years ago, everybody thought I was a little crazy to bet on myself & my abilities to start a brand new career that I hadn’t even learned the skills for. Because I had been in the service industry for almost 10 years, I was ready to take the risk & start my own business. Now i am able to make my own schedule & show up as my true self without a uniform or having to work for every single dollar table to table not knowing when ill need to pick up another serving shift. My family always wanted me to have a stable, corporate job after graduating college. It may not have been the road they would choose for me but I still got my degree for my parents & I took the risk, started my own permanent makeup business for myself. Taking this risk was rewarded & is still rewarding me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We offer permanent make-up services to lash extensions, as well as body art tattoos. Our shop, Empress Ink has two apprentices that are currently going through a licensing process, a lash artist, & myself. We also offer tattoo & permanent make-up training/apprenticeship, lash training class, & online classes (under construction right now). We also sell PMU supplies & machine & other retail items. We strive to make every single client feel beautiful & most like themselves. We try to listen & treat every customer like they are a good friend of ours. We also do donations & other charity work such as making goodie bags for the unhoused folks in the kansas city community.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

When I first started in this industry, i had to spend over $3500 for a 2-day class to learn microblading & other permanent makeup as well as go under an apprenticeship that cost over $10k to work under a licensed shop. I had two jobs when I began this venture to help pay for my skills education. I had built my credit score to be great so I took advantage of that & got multiple credit cards (to pay off later, which I did). I also got a business credit card & account once I established an LLC & EIN. So really, I funded my business & the skills for my business with nothing in my bank account & savings. I also took a loan out so I could support my learning but also be able to pay rent. By the time I was ready to take in clients, I was working out of my apartment (low overhead) & was just ready to start this thing. I ended up doing so well that I was completely booked up on my second year of business which now I have the privilege to not have to take on so many clients.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We sell pmu supplies, machines, numbing cream, ink & other retail items on www.thepmubox.com. I sell on shopify which means I have to do all the marketing & advertising to sell the products. I would say, the pros of this is I get to control (for the most part) how much to pay out, what I focus on, & the ability to control almost everything. While if I were to sell on other platforms such as amazon, they already have a specific system which will take a bigger cut & control more aspects of your business. But there would be less of a need for your own marketing & advertising.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.browswithyena.com
• Instagram: @browswithyena
• Facebook: @browswithyena
• Linkedin: Yena Kim

Image Credits
@browswithyena