**Becoming a Brand Educator in the Nail Industry**

Hey, guys! It's Liz Morris from the Nail Hub, and today I have a very special podcast episode for you.

Yesterday, I taught an online class, which was very fun. I actually taught a class on Happy Vibes, the new collection from Life Elegance, and I had students from all over the world. We had 100 people in my online class yesterday, and it was amazing. So that was very, very fun. Way to start a Tuesday morning!

After my class, I went on to my social media and was catching up with DMs and emails and checking social media, all that good stuff. And I came across a DM from Melissa, who is a beauty educator.

Melissa's message yesterday to me said, "I'm teaching a lesson on career opportunities and nails to nail students at a beauty school on Thursday. Is there any chance you would be willing to make a quick video or voice memo about being a brand educator for them?" And I said, "Absolutely." I mean, this sounds like a great topic, number one. And I'm very passionate about helping people who are in beauty school and trying to become beauty professionals. So I reached out and said, "Hey, let me know what the name of the school is. I'll give them a shout out." She wrote back and said, "Austin Kade Academy."

While I Googled Austin Kade Academy, and Austin Kade Academy is in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which to some of you might not be significant, but I am from a town called Pocatello, Idaho, which is 45 minutes south of Idaho Falls. We are basically sister cities in southeastern Idaho. And I just thought that was so, you know, kismet, if you will.

So I am doing a shout out today to Austin Kade Academy and all of the nail technology students that are there studying. Very exciting. And we can't wait to have you join the professional industry.

I wanted to talk a little bit today about being a brand educator and what that entails and some of the trade-offs that there are with doing that.

Being a brand educator, at least from my perspective, is one of the most rewarding things I have ever gotten into. I would say I am a natural educator; I really enjoy it. So I naturally fell into that when I started working in the professional industry. I did work behind the chair. I operated a salon. Then I started getting into product sales and doing brand education.

I think that's one of the things that is interesting about our industry is a lot of people think that becoming a brand educator is a natural next step, like it's some kind of career ladder that you need to go to that position in order to be considered an elite or successful nail technician. And I want to dispel that because that actually is not true.

Being a brand educator, in my mind, is a completely different career path than being a nail technician. Obviously, you need to be a good nail technician in order to be a brand educator because you need to have the knowledge and the application knowledge, the product knowledge, the technical knowledge. But I also know a lot of really good brand educators who didn't start out as nail technicians. They just know the product inside and out and they know what it's all about and what's great about it.

Being a brand educator is actually more of being a sales representative than it is about being a nail technician or just working with nail products. Yes, you get to test nail products. Yes, you get to, you know, work on things like that behind the scenes. You get to go to trade shows; you get to do all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it's more of a sales representative job. Your job as a brand educator is to represent the products from that brand, to teach people how to use those products, and ultimately to encourage people to purchase those products over another brand's alternative.

And I think that's something that's not necessarily clear to people in our industry. They're thinking that it's some kind of elite level that you have to get to. And like I said, to me it's a completely different career option.

So if you think you would like to get into something like educating and doing sales for a specific company, then brand education is a great option for that.

Another consideration that I think a lot of people don't think about is that you really cannot do it all if you are dedicated to doing nails on clientele. It becomes increasingly difficult to continue to do that when you're traveling, doing trade shows, or doing education classes or trying to sell products. It adds more work to your plate. So you have to really start to segment what you do and prioritize what you do and choose which job part you want to focus on.

For me, I actually left working behind the chair full time to become a brand educator and a product distributor. So it's a completely different part of

my career, and I found myself not having the time for clientele anymore to the point where I had to actually give up my clientele. I wasn't able to keep regular hours for them anymore, and so I decided to forego that and go into brand education.

Now, it also depends on how much brand education you're going to be doing. Some people like to just dabble in it, do a little bit on the side, but I'm a big believer that you're never going to do anything well unless you really focus on that particular thing and you prioritize it.

To me, I think it's very important to segment yourself into a niche where you're an expert and a specialist. I really believe specialization is one of the best options for people in our industry to become successful in what they want to do. And specialization means there are trade-offs. It means once you start specializing in that particular career path, there are going to be things that you have to forego. Like, you become a brand educator, maybe you're not able to work on clientele as much.

So I think this is something to consider, which is if you want to be really successful in one particular area of the industry, you're going to have to trade off other things and forego other things. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a very personal decision.

And also, I really want to go back to that idea of being a brand educator as some kind of elite level in our industry. There are a lot of amazing nail technicians that actually get out of doing nails to try becoming a brand educator, and they end up not liking it because they aren't a natural educator type of personality, they aren't a sales representative type of personality. You're really coming out from behind the chair and becoming a public figure, and a lot of personality types do not like that public figure kind of position. It's a very stressful job, it's a very high demand job. And at the end of the day, you have to be willing to kind of go into that sales part of your personality. And I know a lot of creatives in our industry just don't feel comfortable doing that.

So it isn't elite. It's actually really elite to specialize in what you love to do and what you're really, really good at. And there's nothing worse than seeing someone who is an amazing client base, nail technician, or nail professional, or who leaves doing that because they're pressured to think that there's some other part of our industry that is more exclusive or more elite, only to find out that they should have just stayed as a nail technician because that's truly where their heart is. So consider that. Consider not just, you know, what the idea is. I know a lot of students, they look at things like trade show educators and they go, my gosh, I want to do that. That's so amazing. But I want you to really focus on what do you enjoy doing? Do you enjoy working on clients? Do you enjoy the idea of being more of a sales representative? Do you maybe want to become an educator like Melissa and teach other actual beauty school students? I mean, there are a ton of career possibilities within our industry, but I want you to actually consider what you enjoy and what you want to spend your time doing more than the idea or the maybe illusion that has been presented to you with other things. Because everything is just as hard as another. It's just as much work as another. It's just about what do you want to spend your time doing? What do you want to work on?

I have had the pleasure of being a brand educator for a few different brands in my career, and that's also something that does happen, is you're going to align yourself with certain brands based on their trajectory. You know what they're focused on. Maybe that aligns with you, or sometimes that changes and you need to shift over to something else. So it's not something that's permanent either. But I have had the pleasure to work with some really amazing brands like Accents and My Elegance, which I still work with today, and I really love representing those companies because they are very well aligned with my personal position on how I view the industry, what I want for the industry, the seriousness behind the products that they're formulating, the professionalism and what they're putting into what they're doing. And that's also part of that journey, too, which is finding a brand that you really align with so that when you educate and you represent for them, it's something that you also truly believe in as well. It's a full joint effort.

So shout out to the brands that I have been able to educate for, and as I've said, it is one of the most rewarding things that I do. I really enjoy educating, but I also want to let you know that it's not for everybody. And I want you to again think about what you enjoy, think about what you want to specialize in, and then go from there.

All right. So shout out to Austin Kade Academy in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I hope this helps you make that decision as you enter the professional industry. And thank you to Melissa for sending me this amazing DM. I really enjoyed these kinds of requests, and I'll be in touch again with another episode soon. Bye, guys.