Build Your Confidence, Own Your Success

What’s more beautiful than confidence? Ultimately, confidence is at the heart of every service you will provide for any guest who sits in your styling chair, at your nail station, or in your esthetics room.

Confidence is actually an element of the service you deliver. It affects every aspect of the overall guest experience. Your guest’s confidence is tied not only to you and your skills, but to how confident they feel themselves after the service. So, it’s important for future beauty pros to:

• build your own self-confidence

• improve your future guests’ confidence in you and the overall service experience

•  instill confidence with any potential salon employers you interview with or visit

4 Steps to a Confident Career Start

Anna Manukyan, Senior Director of Education and Creative for Ulta Beauty (@amanukyan), leads a team of more than 100 educators who engage with thousands of beauty professionals at 1,400 salons across the country.

“Our team is responsible for building a salon culture that empowers our stylists, makeup artists, skin therapists and all services professionals to improve always, win together and own your success,” Manukyan says. “We believe success starts with skill and confidence. And confidence, like all salon fundamentals, grows from education.”

Here are four steps any beauty pro can take to own your confidence as you build your career path and explore all the beautiful possibilities your future can hold:

1. Practice, practice, practice. In the professional beauty world, this translates as “education, education, education.” As you have likely already learned, your cosmetology education is a critical foundation—and just the beginning. The most confident, successful beauty pros with full books and high retention rates are lifelong learners who invest in themselves.

2. Align your values. As you start your career search, find a salon and culture you can be confident will help you grow.  Seek salons that will invest in you, support your education values, and offer a seamless transition to skills-building, confidence-growing training in salon services, people skills and business. Ideally, these will be customized to your learning style and pace, and designed to elevate and accelerate career growth.

3. Know the script. Yes, it makes sense to strive to be genuine, authentic and yourself when meeting a first-time guest, or going on an important salon interviews. But making a good impression and putting your best foot forward can also depend on knowing what you want to say and how confidently and smoothly you are able to say it. Consultation and interview skills are great places to start building confidence skills. Role play. Write it out. Visualize. Ask educators and stylists you trust for tips and feedback.

4. Stretch yourself. Many salon industry leaders, including Nick Stenson, Ulta Beauty Senior VP of Store and Services Operations, say their professional confidence and success accelerated once they got comfortable being uncomfortable. In this industry, your confidence will grow as you challenge yourself, embrace new salon services and education experiences, and stay open to all the beautiful possibilities your career can offer.

Ulta Beauty Pro Tip

To learn more about career possibilities at Ulta Beauty, visit  https://careers.ulta.com/careers/career-areas/beauty-services and visit your local Ulta Beauty store. Have a conversation or book time with the salon manager. Ask questions. Show interest. Demonstrate and build your confidence. We are here to help you grow stronger.  One way we build confidence among beauty professionals is our commitment to take care of you while you are busy taking care of guests. Again, what could be more beautiful?