The Hectic Podcast with Beth Walker: Build community

As a licensed holistic aesthetician and makeup artist specializing in clean beauty, Beth Walker has rubbed shoulders with celebrities and had her work featured in some of the biggest publications and brands in the world. 

Yet, despite this incredible portfolio, her career isn’t something she always expected to pursue. While she loves her work, she has a long list of life goals to pursue.

With both parents and her twin sister in the skincare industry, Beth was already familiar with and confident with the work. She moved from helping her sister with her makeup business to building her own.

“I’m still very on top of the business side of things,” she says, “but I enjoy this better when I don’t compare and I don’t overthink things and I don’t get attached to certain clients. Because the nature of this industry is you could be hired for a bunch of shoots and then they’d move on to a different artist. Or you just get one shoot with them.”

Though she struggled with it in the beginning, she learned that letting go is the best way to deal with the uncertainty.

“So in the earlier days, that caused a great deal of anxiety because there was fear of, ‘Another gig’s not going to come in and if these guys don’t hire me, who will?’” she says. “Now, I just go with the flow. There’s rapport with clients. I feel very good about myself, that I’ve done the best that I can do, and so I trust that this is just going to keep on flowing. And so far so good.”

When the pandemic hit in early 2020, however, Beth struggled to maintain this healthy mentality in the face of a radical industry and career disruption. 

“The pandemic was at some points, terrifying. I thought I’d never work another day in this industry,” she says. “I was handing deposits back, left, right, and center. I had so many commercial shoots, long-planned commercial shoots, canceled. No postponing, just done. We’re done. It was an attack on my psyche. It was awful.”

But she didn’t let it keep her down.

“But the light through that was, this was a welcomed break,” Beth says. “I was getting a bit burnt out and I was losing sight of, ‘Why do I do this?’” 

While in lockdown, she looked for ways to make the situation a win, searching for the right pivot. She found the opportunity in her branding, particularly with updating her website.

“It was focusing on bettering how I look when a producer or an art director gets on my website,” she says. “I want their first impression to be wow and in order for the wow to happen, I had to invest in branding. Legit, proper branding across the board.”

She worked with another independent creator to redesign her site, an in-depth process that brought forward amazing results.

“Especially for an industry like mine, I feel like it was money well-spent,” she says. “And I can tell it’s made a difference."

Though she chose to tackle this project because of the pandemic, regularly making significant investments in her company is one of Beth’s strategies for success.

“I’m a big believer in spending money to make money. Investing in your business,” she says. “When you start getting checks, when your invoices start getting paid, invest it back into your business. Up your game with your branding. Build a good website, it’s only going to get you better clients.”

Get the full story here as Beth shares more about her journey with clean beauty, how you can create an industry reputation that draws clients, and why you should build relationships with others in your field, competitors included.

You can find her on Instagram at @bethwalker_ecobeauty and at her new website, bwmakeup.com.

For more information about her sister Sally’s art and work, listen to the full episode and find her on Instagram at @sallymina.art and sallymina.com.