While “beauty is only skin deep,” there is no getting around the fact that beauty begins with the skin—or so feel millions of people who are increasingly using skincare products and services to facialists (also called aestheticians or estheticians) to help them make their faces look young, fresh, and healthy. Despite ailing economies throughout the world, the global beauty industry continues to grow. Facialists are increasingly in demand simply because we live in an aging society. The baby boom generation refuses to age ungracefully and younger women and men are adopting skin care regimens as looking young or as close to ageless as possible helps one’s career, whether one is employed or seeking clients for one’s own business.
The services of a facialist are the next best thing to plastic surgery for slowing the inevitable aging process of the skin, averting wrinkles, and minimizing other types of skin problems. To keep the face looking as young and healthy as possible, facialists use chemistry, pressure, and electricity to offer an exotic array of treatments such as peels, waxing, collagen, seaweed, mud, oxygenating and lifting masks; facials using vitamins, glycolic acid, aromatherapy, and paraffin; lash and brow tinting; drainage massages; and treatments using cold, hot stones, ayurveda, herbology, lasers, cell abrasion, and crystal microdermabrasion.
Each facialist has her own point of view as to what works best and is healthiest for her clients, but they usually offer each client a wide selection of treatments from basic care to deep pore cleansing, rejuvenating and hydrating, with each session lasting roughly one to two hours.
Some facialists put their clients on antiaging regimens that involve weekly treatments over a period of six to eight weeks followed up with ongoing monthly sessions. Treatments may include applying oxygen to the skin and electric facial toning. Many clients continue their monthly follow-up treatments indefinitely.
Because people tend to hop from one facialist to another, constantly seeking new ways to keep their skin young, facialists generally need to periodically introduce new products and ideas to keep attracting new clients and retain old ones. Something new as of this writing is the use of crushed gemstones and minerals to create custom-blended skin products for clients. Permanent makeup is becoming popular. It involves providing permanent eyeliner, eyebrows, and lip color for clients using a tattooing process, micropigmentation. It also can be used to camouflage scars and create beauty marks.
On average, a busy facialist sees between three and five clients per day, because it takes time for clients to disrobe and dress again, and you need time to do the facial and counsel each client on proper follow-up care.
The main challenge to becoming a facialist in the U.S. is that all states except Connecticult require you to be licensed as a cosmetician (also called aesthetician/esthetician) in order to work with people’s skin. While many states allow home and mobile salons, others do not and the zoning in some communities does not permit home-based salons. However, facialists can sometimes successfully apply to their local zoning board and receive approval to work from their homes, as long as they restrict their work to facials and don’t do haircutting or styling.
You will need to have business insurance to protect yourself in the event of any problems or accidents, although some facialists lessen their insurance costs by not doing higher-risk procedures like chemical peels or micropigmentation.
For people who are not licensed, direct selling companies like Avon, Jafra and Mary Kay enable you to entering this make-people-happy field by selling products without applying them.
For an initial free consultation to explore this or another sustainable livelihood that bests suits your personality and your community, contact us.
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