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Welcome & Introductions
10 Plays1 month ago
In this debut episode of the Beauty & The Business Podcast, hosts Damon Rourke and Renee Leone introduce the mission behind the show—helping beauty professionals navigate the business side of the industry.
Renee shares her powerful journey of building a six-figure beauty business from scratch after facing life-altering challenges as a single mom. She opens up about her struggles in beauty school, the harsh realities of entrepreneurship, and how she developed a step-by-step system to help other beauty professionals succeed.
Damon and Renee also discuss the staggering failure rates in the beauty industry, why so many entrepreneurs struggle, and how this podcast will provide actionable strategies, business insights, and community support to help listeners turn their passion into profit.
If you're a beauty entrepreneur ready to break through the noise, overcome obstacles, and build a thriving business, this episode is your first step toward success!
💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✅ The reality of beauty school and why most professionals are unprepared for business
✅ The biggest mistakes new beauty entrepreneurs make (and how to avoid them)
✅ How to start building your business while still in school
✅ The importance of resilience, mindset, and having the right tools to succeed
✅ What to expect from future episodes and how this podcast will support your journey
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Transcript
Meet the Entrepreneurs
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Beauty and the Business Podcast. I'm Renee Leon, a beauty entrepreneur, coach, single mom who built a six-figure beauty business straight out of school. Now I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to stop struggling and start scaling, you're in the right place. Let's turn your passion into profit. Now hit play and let's build your beauty impact.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the very first inaugural podcast of beauty and the business. My name is Damon Rourke. I'm joined by my business partner Renee Leon. I've been in sales and marketing for the last 20, almost 20 years, working with entrepreneurs, specifically with beauty professionals over the last 13 years.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I love working with people that are go-getters. I love working with people that work hard. I love people that are willing to take a chance of themselves. And so personally, that's why I love this community and really join partner in partnership with Renee on on helping this community specifically.
00:01:08
Speaker
And you know, Renee's done so much incredible stuff in this industry and though she's been in just a short time. I think the best way to really introduce you guys to the the heart and the core of beauty in the business is for me to interview you Renee. What do you think?
00:01:25
Speaker
Sounds great to me. Okay, perfect. So let's start, you know, um I love people's stories and we've been friends for eight years. I love your story. Like I really just truly love your story. um Let's start there. but How did you get involved in the beauty business?
Renee's Journey
00:01:42
Speaker
Where were you at in life? What what did that look like for you?
00:01:46
Speaker
So when you and I first met, I was a stay at home mom and I just was looking for something to kind of occupy my time and bring in some fun money. And that's when I started just selling some skincare products from home, trying my best, you know, i post on the internet and just get some engagement. But I'm not from Texas where we live. I'm from Iowa.
00:02:08
Speaker
And I was a young single mom or young mom to start out. And I didn't have a lot of network. I didn't have a lot of community. So I started with that. But then I kind of got some success. Like it was fun to have some goals and some wins. Because as a single as a stay at home mom, my day was cheerios, play dates, pickups. And this was nice to focus something else. What I didn't foresee happening was a divorce.
00:02:35
Speaker
in my near future that left me virtually with nothing. So I had to figure it out. My former career before ah cosmetology industry was fine dining restaurant management. So I couldn't do that. I couldn't go back and work those hours and have three kids and build a business successfully. I didn't want to miss parties and play dates and you know school programs and have to ask somebody for time off of work.
00:03:05
Speaker
So I decided the alternative was to go to beauty school because it was something that I always kind of love to do. Hair and makeup for my friends in high school always kind of had a natural skill set for it and looking into it. The only thing I could do was a lash extension license in the state of Texas.
00:03:24
Speaker
It was the shortest and the cheapest, to be honest. that's I had 320 hours that I had to complete. And when I selected the school that I chose, what I didn't realize was that it was this little hole in the wall. And the reason they were so flexible with hours is because they didn't really care. They gave me a book and a kit, and that was basically the extent of it. By day three, I finally stepped out of the room, the room I was sitting in but all by myself. So you were the only one in the class? I was the only student in the class for lashes. There were some hair people out in the like front of the school, but no one ever talked to me. So I went to the front desk and like, Hey, when does class start? And this little sweet lady, she's like, Oh, you have your book and your kit.
00:04:08
Speaker
There's a little bit of a language barrier there. um You're good. And so I just went back in the room and I just bawled my eyes out because I'm like, I spent every single dime that I had to go to school to create a career. And I was so excited when I did it. Like I had my scrubs on, I was ready to go. And I had no choice but to get on YouTube and you know purchase some online courses and just teach myself essentially.
00:04:35
Speaker
I think by week two or three, this sweet little lady came in and she corrected me on a couple of things. And that was the extent of my guidance. And from that point I watched women walk into that same room with the same excitement.
00:04:51
Speaker
and then be completely devastated when they found out that this was what they signed up for. So I started taking them under my wing and kind of showing them the ropes of the basic how-tos.
Building a Beauty Business
00:05:01
Speaker
And before you know it, I realized I was the one bringing in models for school based on the knowledge that I've gotten from you and the skin brand company of how to network myself, how to post, how to just kind of organically build a network when you don't have one.
00:05:18
Speaker
And while I was in school, I already had a full book of business before I graduated. And because of that, I was able to go and start my own or get my own room. I had a roommate that I had planned to room with. And we were going to alternate days and I made your salon suite. And um it didn't end up working out because she kept going into my days. It was in a relaxing environment. So my first room that fresh out of school was $350 a week.
00:05:47
Speaker
And no one hustles harder than a single mom. So I just kind of figured it out. I worked 13 days on one day off. I did all of the trial. And I mean, if somebody suggested something to me, I tried it because like, what is there to lose? Nothing truly.
00:06:05
Speaker
But a couple of years then I decided to open my own place and bring in other beauty entrepreneurs. I call it a boutique salon suite. So there's about six of us here in this building. And um we all kind of work synergistically together. We all have our separate things, but throughout building this salon, I realized that I could pretty much pinpoint who was going to make it and who was not. And now we're five years in and I have a great group of women here.
00:06:34
Speaker
and I developed a system to teach other women how to just break it down to where it's daily steps instead of like this feeling of overwhelm, of you have these goals, but what do you do to get to the goal? What do you do to reach that destination? And I think so many times we just focus on the big grand scheme of things, the big picture, and it almost gets too overwhelming and we just freeze.
00:07:02
Speaker
There's fight, flight, freeze. There's a lot of freezing that goes on.
Challenges in the Beauty Industry
00:07:05
Speaker
And so by just, you know, creating the planner, creating the course, walking these women step by step, I've been able to build six figure businesses, not just for myself, but for women under this roof to and others that are in other parts of the country. And that's what I really fell in love with. I think I think God puts you in situations and puts you through trials so you can take that and do something to make an impact with it. Yeah. And that's, so when we were putting this all together, I was shocked at the numbers. I mean, I know, I knew the numbers for entrepreneurs in their first few years, but when you see so many beauty schools and you start thinking about all the mainly women, these like 99% is what we found, 99%, we're 95, 99% women that get involved in the beauty industry.
00:07:50
Speaker
all of them that go out of business in the first five years, I mean, it's 80%. It is, that was shocking to me. I mean, it really was shocking because just like what you say, in you know we've talked about this, I think your you're not the norm essentially of of where you have a career and then you go back to cosmetology school. A lot of people know that they wanna be in the industry from an early age. Would you agree with that?
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah. Or they just don't know what else to do. Like, and so it just makes sense. It's kind of like four year college or, Oh, I guess I'll go to cosmetology school. Like I got to do something. yeah Um, a lot of different States have different programs too, where they can graduate with the cosmetology license, which is so amazing in my opinion. But you know, they get in there, they learn basics. They think they're going to learn how to do every technique, every style, whatever.
00:08:44
Speaker
their situation might not have been as devastating as mine where I learned nothing from an instructor, but they think that they're going to be equipped with the tools to run a business and they're not given that. It is just what knowledge, what can I give you to make you pass your exams and get licensed and whatever you do after that, I don't care. That's usually the mindset of schools. And that's, you know, the entrepreneurs that I've worked with over the last 20 years, they they had some business knowledge beforehand, whether they were at a fortune 500 company, whether they worked for somebody else.
00:09:15
Speaker
whether they were an entrepreneur before, they had some basis for it. And usually they were you know at least further along in life. Like theyre you know they were in their 30s, 40s, 50s. And so they had some life experience too. And the the amount of people that I've run into in the beauty industry that are in their teens and 20s and 30s and maybe they were a stay at home mom before. And and you know they haven't worked since they were 22, 23. It's just, it was staggering because you take those people who have a passion for beauty and you put them into the business world where it's you can't just have a passion for something. but And so I like it it it. It is an entrepreneurial journey for sure, but a lot of people that are in there don't have the life experience or the business experience to translate that into a successful career. And that's where I think we see that 80% burnout, or not even burnout, failure rate, really. Probably a mixture of burnout and failure rate. Because like you said, it's just you're just struggling so much. i
00:10:10
Speaker
I imagine entrepreneurship of like jumping in the deep end. And then, you know, there's there's programs out there that'll be like a floaty for you. But you're not really doing any of the work yourself. You're not you're just sitting there floating. You're not moving any place. And what I really like about the course we created and and just the support group, it's like we're just teaching you how to swim calmly. Yeah. You know, instead of struggling and and kicking and and drowning.
00:10:34
Speaker
treading water. Of course, by the way, Damon's a former D1 athlete. He went to UT for swimming. like yeah I like in everything to swimming, unknowingly. But I mean, that's really what it's like. like it's it's where We want to give people the tools to be able to tread water, to be able to swim, keep your head above water long enough so you can figure this thing out.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah. And it's really just, you know, one of the, the planner that I developed, there's something that in there is the seven steps
Key to Success: Perseverance
00:11:05
Speaker
to success. And the last step is just be here in a year. Like if you can get in the mindset of just not giving up on what you set out to do, you, you won't fail. It might take longer. It might, you might have to redirect the sales a little bit in that journey, but it's, you know, you'll get there eventually that the key factor is that you just can't give up.
00:11:28
Speaker
and you know I've said this before in coaching it hurts me more when people give up on themselves because I have the ability um to see their potential and kind of navigate where they need to go and things they need to adjust and it breaks my heart that there's so many individuals out there that are just willing to throw in the towel because they had a little hiccup or somebody left a bad review or Whatever. So by equipping these students and you know beauty professionals with the keys to keep going the tools to keep going and have the support.
00:12:01
Speaker
I'm just really excited about it. And so yeah that's what we're we're doing. Yeah. And this group of people, I get more and more excited about it. The more we do, we've been working on this for a few months, but the more that we do this, the more I'm excited about it because who else would you want to work with? Like, that's why I love working with people that they take a chance on themselves. You're you're talking about um people that said, I don't want to go the normal route, right? I know that I want to be in beauty.
00:12:26
Speaker
they They go to school, they pay for school, they really they i mean they lay it out in the line and then they graduate and then they have to start building a business if they didn't start already. i think The smartest move that we're going to train on is start building when you're still in school. right Start building that book of business so you can hit the ground running. But you know essentially, or at at the bottom line, like who else would you rather be working with?
00:12:49
Speaker
right like like Who else is more inspiring than somebody that follows a passion, takes a chance on themselves, and they're willing to work hard? like Those are people I can help. Those are people that we can we can really, really
Inspiration for Beauty Pros
00:13:00
Speaker
work with. so um Guys, this in a nutshell is what you're going to get with Beauty and the Business. and you know so Tune in to the next podcast. Make sure you like and subscribe.
00:13:10
Speaker
um And join us at we have a a website VIP VIP beauty in the business dot VIP so WWW dot beauty in the business Dot VIP that's right I'll get that cleaner on the next episode and we will see you guys there