Ep. 126: Giving Thanks As Husband And Wife: Life As PMU Artist Slash Beauty Business Coach Married To A High School Educator
'Tis the season to be grateful!
2020 has been...an interesting year. It's been a year nothing like anything we've ever experienced before. But I still think there's a lot to be grateful for, a lot of good things that managed to come out of this crazy year.
So for this episode, I got on with my husband, Will, to continue our series exploring our relationship as a PMU artist slash beauty business coach and high school educator. We talk about our favorite quotes on gratitude, our thoughts on its importance, and what we're most grateful for this year.
Here are the episode highlights:
‣‣ [03:42] It's Thanksgiving so I want to start by talking about everything that I'm so grateful for in this crazy year 2020.
‣‣ [08:20] Will and I need to chat a little bit first about the last time he was on the podcast
‣‣ [09:48] We want to share some of our favorite quotes about gratitude and dive into them a little bit here.
‣‣ [13:49] Ironically the thing that we're both most grateful for this year is the fact that we had to cancel my big event the Pretty Ambitious Summit. It was heartbreaking without a doubt but I have experienced so much growth since that moment - and I don't only mean in my business.
WHAT ARE YOU GRATEFUL FOR? (Listen Here)
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Here are the links that were mentioned in the podcast!
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You can enjoy a transcript of the podcast here.
Sheila Bella:
Welcome to Pretty Rich Podcast, where you're totally the heroine of your own story. I'm your host, Sheila Bella, and I built a seven-figure PMU beauty biz, and a seven-figure online business, without a degree, without a fancy website, or a sugar daddy. If you and I hang out on here long enough, you're going to start to believe that you can do it too. How about that for a side effect of listening to this podcast? Because you really can. I know you think I don't know you, I have no idea who you are, but I do. I really, really do, because I am you, I was you. I believe we're all on the same journey together. My perfect job didn't exist, so I created it. The job I wanted wasn't hiring me, wanting nothing to do with me, so I skipped the line and hired myself as CEO, just like you can. Consider me your secret beauty biz BFF in case you need to be reminded on a weekly basis that power is never just handed to you, you have to take it. Are you ready, beauty boss? Let's jump in.
Hey, you guys. It's Sheila Bella. Happy Thanksgiving. It's Thanksgiving day, and today I have a special podcast that my husband and I recorded last night. I don't know, this episode is not going to be your typical Pretty Rich Podcast, but I just wanted to come on here and connect with you guys and tell you how grateful I am for all of you. It happens to me a lot that I meet you guys, either on social media or maybe over a strategy call or sometimes even at a conference, and it always boggles my mind how you tell me you listen to me every day, me and my little life and my little family. It's like, "Whoa," it makes me feel really good and feel really connected to all of you honestly. I connect with each and every one of you as individuals, especially when I meet you in person, or maybe I connect with you over Instagram direct message. Yeah, I'm just so, so grateful. So, so grateful, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for believing in me, believing in this mission and this message.
I just wanted to come on here and reflect a little bit about the things that I'm grateful for today. Oh my goodness. I'm not editing this vacuum cleaner. Okay, let me just close the door. I'm recording this from my phone. Oh, how casual we've come, how casual we've come. Because when I first started doing this, I recorded my first episode three times using all my professional equipment in my closet, and now sometimes I just wing it and I'm like, "You know what? We're going to use the phone today," depending on the situation.
This Thanksgiving, I'm just so grateful. I look at my children, who are my every reason for living on this earth. I look at their little faces, Beau and Grey, they're ages six and three now. I'll be honest with you, I want another baby. If God blesses me with another healthy child, I'll be so, so grateful. I look at their little faces and I know that they won't be little soon. I am so grateful for the closeness that they feel with one another, and at times, the rivalry between them. I'm so grateful to get to witness that because that's something I never really had, is that sibling relationship that I wanted so badly.
I'm grateful for the gifts out of 2020, for the many ways that this pandemic has grown my family, has challenged us, stretched us outside of our comfort zones, let me tell you, both personally as well as you know, in my business. But from that stretching, from that discomfort came a ton of growth, a ton. Guys, you know it's not easy. I'm so grateful for the privilege of raising boys. I'm a boy mom and so proud. Everyone says, "You should have a girl. You should have a girl," and while I would love a girl, sure, I'm just so grateful for what I have now. I am #boymom and proud. It's so much fun, so much fun, and it's easier. I already know that it's easier in some ways. Yeah, I am so grateful for the privilege of raising boys who will one day be men, who will one day be fathers themselves. Whether they be artists, entrepreneurs, social workers, athletes, teachers, entertainers, or whatever their little hearts lead them to be in the future, I'm grateful for the time that I have with them now, and for this immense privilege that God has entrusted me with.
To my husband, I am so honored to be his wife. I was thinking about it the other day. I have not met any other man before or after our wedding day, or know of any other man who I feel like is my match. You know what I'm saying? I wonder sometimes how Will and I found each other, because when we met in 2010, I wasn't very evolved and neither was he, but we did have elements of that. It boggles my mind, how he chose me. I do feel that way, I feel like he chose me first and then I chose him second. How did he see past all this? How did we know that our relationship would be as rich as it is now? I mean, to put it bluntly, I feel like I would lose respect for a lot of guys, but Will is my match intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. He challenges me. I think if it was too easy, I wouldn't stay interested, but God knew what he was doing. You guys are about to listen to him and I just rant deliriously at like 10:00 PM at night.
I am so honored to be the mother of these children, the wife to my husband. I love this family as high as the moon, to Pluto and back, and as blue as the ocean. My heart is so, so full. Thank you Jesus for your grace. I am living a life that I truly don't deserve. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Hold on, hold on, don't hang up, don't press next. I'm just going to include this episode, I'm just going to include the conversation Will and I had last night on here. So yeah, enjoy.
It's beginning to look a lot like Thanksgiving. Hi, Will.
Will Reusch:
Hi, Sheila.
Sheila Bella:
Okay, so today ... Hi, you guys. Okay, so-
Will Reusch:
Last time you said I did terribly.
Sheila Bella:
Oh my gosh, he was so grumpy on our last podcast. You weren't grumpy, but I think your tone was grumpy and that made me grumpy afterwards.
Will Reusch:
It's funny, because you say I have a resting bitch face, but that was audio, so whatever.
Sheila Bella:
You have resting-
Will Reusch:
Maybe I'm just angry at the world.
Sheila Bella:
Your tone is so opposite of mine. I sound like a rainbow unicorn princess person and you sound like a very serious goth.
Will Reusch:
[inaudible 00:09:08] goth, good.
Sheila Bella:
You get in your serious mode. Okay, well, that's not the point. The point of today's podcast is to talk about Thanksgiving. Okay, so yeah, I just wanted to just check in with you. Do you think, is this one of your favorite holidays?
Will Reusch:
Yeah.
Sheila Bella:
Do you like it better than Christmas?
Will Reusch:
No, no, but it's great.
Sheila Bella:
Okay, good. We can stay married, because I like Christmas way more.
Will Reusch:
I like the 4th of July.
Sheila Bella:
That's true. You like the 4th of July above all holidays.
Will Reusch:
But no, I like Thanksgiving. I like gratitude, yeah.
Sheila Bella:
Okay, cool. Well, I just wanted to check in, check in with my Pretty Rich Podcast community with you. It's the night before Thanksgiving and I just pulled up some gratitude quotes. You ready? You want to hear some?
Will Reusch:
Do you know my favorite one?
Sheila Bella:
No, I don't know your favorite one.
Will Reusch:
You don't know?
Sheila Bella:
What's your favorite one?
Will Reusch:
I think he's an author, Neale Donald Walsch. It's, "The struggle ends when gratitude begins."
Sheila Bella:
Oh, well.
Will Reusch:
It's simple, I like it.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah, I like that. There's a lot of good ones here. Let me pull one up. Okay, this is the one I like, Zig Ziglar, "Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for." Okay, yeah, I think that's important. You know the one thing that I wish for our children, and I think you guys have heard me say this before, is gratitude. That's the one quality that I want for them most of all, because if they grow up grateful, it doesn't matter where they're at in life or what they end up doing. They'll be rich, pretty rich, my opinion. Yeah, it doesn't matter. I think that's the number one thing I wish for them. Yeah, and for them to have a relationship with our Lord and savior.
Will Reusch:
Yeah, I think a lot of people, just having taught so many different kids and stuff, it really doesn't matter as much what you have as opposed to appreciating what you have. The other quote that I said, it's like, whoops, those things are hard to hold at the same time, like struggle and strife and all that kind of stuff with gratitude for your situation. I think it just makes it easier.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah.
Will Reusch:
Things could always be worse.
Sheila Bella:
Oh gosh, but there have been times where it's been difficult. It's been difficult to be grateful, yeah. But I don't know, Thanksgiving just brings it out of me. Right now I have, oh, I have a corn casserole that's cooling in the kitchen. I have to remember to cover that and put it in the fridge.
Will Reusch:
Corn casserole cooling?
Sheila Bella:
Yeah.
Brow and lash clients are getting pickier and pickier. If they can't get an appointment right away, they're going to go somewhere else. If you're an artist who's booked out for months, before you congratulate yourself, that's not always a good thing. Why? Because you're losing money as a solo act. You're losing scalability. You're so busy working in your business that you don't have time to work on it. Wasn't the whole point of getting into the beauty business having freedom of time, being able to make your own schedule, making lots of money? But I know it doesn't feel like that for a lot of people, you feel like a brow or a lash robot, right? Stop limiting yourself.
If you know you need to expand, you need to delegate tasks, you need a clone, you need to multiply yourself, but you're scared, I get it. I've hired 14 artists to work for me at Sheila Bella Microblading and it's great. My business makes money even when I'm not there and I have people that I can really trust. If it's possible for me, it's possible for you. If you know you need to expand, delegate tasks, multiply yourself, heck, find your clone, you can do it. But if you're scared and you don't know where to start, I have the perfect thing for you, sister. Download my free Beauty Biz Hiring Guide. It's for artists who are overworked and underpaid. All you need to do is text the words Hiring Guide to 310-388-4588.
Sheila Bella:
Okay, so let's talk about the things we're grateful for this year. What struggles are you grateful for of 2020? Because there were a lot of them. What setbacks or struggles, it's a hard question, are you most grateful for?
Will Reusch:
Oh geez, I don't know. I mean, well, I guess it would be the summit canceling. That was really hard, but it led to a pivot in the business that was really good.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah, yeah. For those of you who don't know, my event, the Pretty Ambitious Summit, was postponed, canceled, postponed, whatever, postponed, because it will happen in March, the day before it started. The day before it started. In many ways, wouldn't you say it was like my baby?
Will Reusch:
Yeah. I mean, it was a whole year of talking about it, all day, every day, and producing it and getting everything, the speakers and the dancers and the pyrotechnics and built those walls and booking the place.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah.
Will Reusch:
Getting all these women that you really wanted to be there to be there. You were so excited to give them this amazing experience and that gave you a lot of purpose, you were like, "These girls have no idea how awesome this experience is going to be."
Sheila Bella:
I know, I know, they had no idea. I'm still upset about it in many ways because like-
Will Reusch:
Yeah, maybe I shouldn't bring it up because you've forgotten about it the past couple of months. It's been nice for me. I'm sorry I said that.
Sheila Bella:
I know. When that happened though, oh man, I was like, "I don't know if I could ever get over this loss." Because yeah, you know what? I was upset and I'm still upset. Anyway, I'm still upset, because as you guys know, I'm a public speaker and so I get invited to all of these awesome conferences. Every time I got invited to a great conference right before my event, I kept getting more and more excited about my own. I would see the organizers, because I know what they were going through, have their event baby. Then putting everything together, this thing that they've built up in their head for a year of planning and everything that they poured their heart and soul into, they finally had the event and then they have their event baby. I see the producer, I'm always watching the producer, walking around the hotel or the venue and I'm like, "She's the one, she made this happen." I just keep thinking, I didn't have my day.
Yeah, I wanted to have my day, and I still will. We still will, because it wasn't just my event. I felt like this industry, it was supposed to be a really collaborative thing that was going to bring this community together and heal a lot of the wounds that I feel like this beauty industry, this community has.
Will Reusch:
A lot grew from that, right?
Sheila Bella:
Yeah.
Will Reusch:
Yeah. It was so interesting, the people who supported you and the people who didn't. Then the whole point of this event was ... I think a big part of it was to unify, and then instead it just highlighted a lot of the divisions.
Sheila Bella:
It did. It did, right? Yeah, that was interesting. It was an education. It was like data. I was like, "Oh, when that happened to me, when that happened to us-
Will Reusch:
Data?
Sheila Bella:
Yes, data.
Will Reusch:
Yeah.
Sheila Bella:
It's not data?
Will Reusch:
Oh, maybe it's data. I thought you meant like dada.
Sheila Bella:
Tomato, tomato?
Will Reusch:
No, that's what our kids call me, so I thought you were talking about-
Sheila Bella:
What? Dada? Hey, dada. They call you data, D-A-T-A?
Will Reusch:
They do, yeah.
Sheila Bella:
We're digressing.
Will Reusch:
Anyway, yeah, So that's a struggle that I'm grateful for it because it was-
Sheila Bella:
You're grateful for that, mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Will Reusch:
Well, yeah, because it was canceled because of COVID and COVID allowed you and your expertise in online marketing to really be able to help people and flourish.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah, we did pivot the business because of that loss, and it was an education.
Will Reusch:
Yeah, COVID highlighted what people needed in the beauty industry was exactly what you were an expert at.
Sheila Bella:
Oh my gosh.
Will Reusch:
The one thing that you are better than-
Sheila Bella:
The one thing. The one thing, I'm not a better microblader than a lot of people.
Will Reusch:
No, you're downright terrible.
Sheila Bella:
Stop, I'm really good.
Will Reusch:
I'm joking.
Sheila Bella:
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, he thinks that's really funny.
Will Reusch:
Yeah.
Sheila Bella:
You think it's funny.
Will Reusch:
[Inaudible 00:18:32] it's not true at all. It's just funny. It's a funny thing to say on your professional podcast.
Sheila Bella:
Stop. I'm not-
Will Reusch:
Edit it out.
Sheila Bella:
No, I'm not editing it out.
Will Reusch:
Anyway.
Sheila Bella:
No.
Will Reusch:
No, but what I'm saying is that thing ... And it also lit a fire under your butt because you were angry and you wanted to still do something awesome and you reinvested that energy into helping people during COVID when their shops were shut down.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah, man. I mean, listen, it would have been different if my salon was just shut down at that time, without the heartache of my event being postponed, but because I was still mourning from my event being postponed, stop, mourning for my event being postponed, it took me a minute to really show up for people. When COVID happened and we're like, "Oh my gosh, the world is ending. What are we going to do?" I was like, "I am so built for right now. I am so built to show up for my people right now. This is what I've been talking about. This is go time for me," and I could not show up for them. I think I disappeared for a good two, three weeks from social media, which is where our industry lives, because I was so sad about my event.
I couldn't show up, but eventually I did and I was like, "Listen, all right. Well, this is the situation. All of our salons and our studios are shut down. Where's the money? It's online, let's go," and then I created an online course workshop. Yeah, and it was like, oh my gosh, I poured so much into that workshop. I think that was the point where I think my business started to pivot and my coaching business started to take off even more.
Will Reusch:
Your salon's still closed. I mean, your salon is still closed.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah, my salon is still closed.
Will Reusch:
You know what's really awesome what you did though?
Sheila Bella:
What?
Will Reusch:
And I brag about you to my students and stuff, because the girls that lost their job, you pivoted them so they could still earn a living.
Sheila Bella:
That's right.
Will Reusch:
Pretty awesome.
Sheila Bella:
Aw, thank you. Yeah, I kept everyone employed.
Will Reusch:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, because it's like, especially in my civics class, it's like you can always pivot your career to something else, instead of doing eyebrows, you can do whatever, like Photoshop or something like that. It's just really cool. You've hired even during this time, even though your salon was shut down, because you took care of your girls.
Sheila Bella:
My company grew during this time. I think I hired 17 people in the last four months. I've hired 17 people and I kept everyone at Sheila Bella employed one way or another. I transitioned our front desk girl into-
Will Reusch:
Yeah, and your people are getting ... Just so many of your clients, I've seen with the stuff that they send you, it's incredible. It really is.
Sheila Bella:
Aw, I feel so blessed.
Will Reusch:
Yeah, it's got to be really rewarding.
Sheila Bella:
Yeah, I feel really blessed. What's-
Will Reusch:
You're helping people to become financially stable during very unstable times. That's incredible.
Sheila Bella:
Aw, I know. I'm going to cry.
Will Reusch:
Good job.
Sheila Bella:
Thank you. I did not high five you. He clapped.
Will Reusch:
It's like studio, it's like sound effects.
Sheila Bella:
No, I didn't high five you.
Will Reusch:
Good job.
Sheila Bella:
Thanks. Thanks, dude.
Will Reusch:
That time you did.
Sheila Bella:
No, I didn't, you clapped again. Oh my gosh. Okay. Stop, you hit me. He hit me.
Will Reusch:
Don't say that.
Sheila Bella:
You did, you slapped my arm.
Will Reusch:
Don't say that.
Sheila Bella:
Stop. Will, are you high? No, he's not, he's not.
Will Reusch:
No, I'm a school teacher.
Sheila Bella:
No, you're a school teacher. Of course not, you're a school teacher. Okay, all right.
Will Reusch:
[inaudible 00:00:23:00]. That's good, you said five minutes.
Sheila Bella:
Fine.
Will Reusch:
I feel like a half hour.
Sheila Bella:
Five minutes. Okay, fine. I'll record an intro tomorrow. I'll record an intro tomorrow.
Will Reusch:
And scene.
Sheila Bella:
Okay. Have a happy Black Friday and Thanksgiving weekend, you guys. Okay, bye.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Pretty Rich Podcast. If you want to continue the conversation longer, check me out on Instagram. It's my favorite place to connect with you guys, @RealSheilaBella, I'm happy to answer any of your questions or simply to chat and get to know you better. If you end doing something super awesome, like screenshotting this episode and reposting out of your stories, that would put the biggest smile on my face. Don't forget to tag me. I appreciate every share and love feedback from my listeners. Also, do you have my number? Do you have my number? Because if we're going to keep hanging out, you should probably have my number so you can actually text me. That's right, you can text me at 310-388-4588.
If you're sick and tired of doing business alone and you're interested in accelerating your success by hiring a business coach or joining our mentorship program called Pretty Rich Bosses, go ahead and just apply. Why not? Check it out. Go to sheilabella.com/apply and we'll schedule a free strategy session with either myself or one of my advisors.
Of course, I've got include my kids. Here to send us off are Beau and Grey. Gray, say share with your friends.
Grey:
Share with friends.
Sheila Bella:
Please review my mommy on iTunes.
Grey:
[inaudible 00:25:00] mommy iTunes.
Sheila Bella:
Thanks for listening.
Grey:
Thanks for listening.
Sheila Bella:
Hey, Beau, can you tell everybody what our family motto is?
Beau:
Yeah, I can do hard things.
Sheila Bella:
I can do hard things. Good job, buddy.
