Nails 101: A Student Blog

Week Two: Real Live Humans!

by Harriet Gibson | July 14, 2014 | Bookmark +

You may recall that I was worrying about working on clients last week. Well, it turns out that real, live clients caused me a couple of headaches in week two. Don’t get me wrong — one of my favourite things about this business is the people. I love meeting new customers, coming up with something amazing, and having them bounce out the door all refreshed and confident.

However, the ones who kind of do and definitely don’t know what they want can be a complete brain fudge. One lady having a gel pedi told me to “do what you think is right,” then spent half an hour deciding her Swarovski crystals (set in Crystalac) should be exactly symmetrical despite thinking a scattered look would be prettier initially. Exhausting doesn’t even begin to cover it! It’s so hard to know where to draw the line, especially being the newbie. I don’t want to have unhappy clients, but of course I can’t spend extra hours every day catering to people like this.

Working for free has started to become a little shadow in the back of my mind, too. Friends or family of those of us who are trained and skilled suddenly seem so quick to offer themselves up as a model or ask for discounts with a wink. In all honesty, I feel a little bit insulted by it. Hopefully now and in the future I will be providing such an awesome service that people will be happy to pay the top rate.

I guess it’s another part of building confidence in myself and my abilities. I sure don’t want to be charging £10 [$17 U.S.] for a full set of nails and barely earning minimum wage. If anyone has any advice, please feel free to comment or share your experiences!

Here is some of the nail art I've been working on.

Here is some of the nail art I've been working on.

Until next week,

— Harriet

 

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