Читать книгу Single. Women. Entrepreneurs. Second Edition - Erin Albert - Страница 36

Being an entrepreneur is in my blood. My father owned property, but he didn’t necessarily love it. When I was young, I ran a lemonade stand with some of the other neighborhood kids, and started Kids Incorporated—we’d wash windows and clean houses for money. When I was 12, I got interested in doing makeup. When I was 15, I started working at the mall at several different retailers. I LOVED putting together outfits to help people feel more confident. The hours and the pay weren’t great, and the management irked me, but I loved helping customers.

I was in the private sector for a long time working in a day job, and then my mom saw an article on a consultant named Darlene Mathis in the paper who was talking about how wearing certain clothes compliment the wearer and how you should have them in your wardrobe as well. I was talking to my hairdresser about the article (we tell our hairdressers everything anyway, right?) and my hairdresser actually knew this woman, so I got connected! Darlene decided to do a seminar since a lot of people called after seeing her in the article. It was a full day—half of the day we learned how to find someone’s best colors, and the other half was spent on applying makeup.

I took this class around 2001, and noticed that other training on how to do image consulting was outrageously expensive and I couldn’t afford to travel to the consultants and pay for the classes. So I read every book I could get my hands on around fashion, body typing, and image. I kept working and did other things for 2 years until I came across AICI in 2006, or the Association of Image Consultants International, which has three levels of certification; the First Level Certification (FLC), The Certified Image Professional (CIP) and the Certified Image Master (CIM), of which there are only 8 in the world. It was at a conference where I met Carla Mathis, a CIM. Her company is Body Beautiful. I took two of Carla’s Certification classes and loved it! She is truly a professional and a wonderful person. Although I don’t have my AICI certification anymore because the cost of maintaining the certification didn’t translate to business for me, I still attend some of their trade association meetings. I’ve had the chance to be part of Stacy London’s new venture, Style for Hire (www.styleforhire.com) and I am certified through her company as well. I keep up with my education on fashion, style and business by reading the latest books. I am also a makeup artist; I freelanced for MAC Cosmetics for a few years and Christian Dior Cosmetics as well. The only part of image I don’t do is hair, and my daughter is studying cosmetology right now, so I won’t have to!