De’borah Mitchell is the CEO and founder of Klasee Beauty. She created the brand to make professional makeup easy, convenient and affordable.
Through Klasee Beauty by De’borah, she also helps to teach beginners how to properly apply makeup through her engaging social media posts.
Mitchell talked about her journey and the skills that are essential for aspiring beauty entrepreneurs.
What did your career path look like?
Growing up, my aunt owned three beauty salons and I could not wait until summertime to work in her salons. Working in my family’s beauty salon I would help with selling jewelry, greeting customers, and helping with style decisions for the clients. I am looking to become well-known in the beauty industry and across all social media sites within the next five years.
What has been your biggest career high and your biggest career low?
My biggest career high is having a team to represent my brand and understand the importance of being part of a team. My biggest career low is not having enough exposure [for] my brand. We bring [publicists] on our team expecting they will represent the brand, and they do not. It’s like pulling teeth to build a team, but I am certain in due time we will have a committed team.
What inspires you to show up at work every day?
I am motivated by several things. First and foremost, I am motivated by meeting deadlines, targets or goals. I believe I am at my best at running my business when I have responsibility for important deadlines because this gives me a great sense of achievement. I am also motivated by learning new things and building a lasting relationship.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned in your career?
In my career, I’ve had lots of moments when I feel I’ve achieved something and also lots of other moments when something has gone wrong. I have learned that it helps to use neither to define who you can be nor what you can achieve. … I have learned to do my research when adding anyone to represent my brand. [And] to also do research on vendors and the quality of products.
What skills are essential for aspiring beauty entrepreneurs?
Every entrepreneur needs to be an effective communicator. Sales are the soft skills that go together with the communication necessary to be successful. Focusing on the ability to learn is the best business strategy.
Describe how you set goals and evaluate your success.
We conduct self-assessments to [evaluate] our interests, strengths, and areas to improve. We write down our potential goals, strengths and weaknesses. We convert our objectives into smart goals to determine which goals to set. This stands for smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. We also build an action plan to meet these goals, map out a timeline, and set deadlines.
