10 Roles of a Brow Artist

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1. Background and Goal of the Article

Stepping into the world of brow artistry is not just about mastering the art of hairstrokes, powder brows, microblading, or hairstrokes. The roles extend far beyond the procedure for those beginning their careers in this dynamic field. The responsibilities are diverse and often complex, from managing finances to developing a marketing strategy. This article explores the key tasks a new brow artist must navigate, provides guidance on managing them effectively, and discusses what tasks can be outsourced. Additionally, it will offer a ballpark figure for the costs involved in each area, aiding the starting artist in better navigating the field.

Foundational Research

The insights in this article are supported by a large, ongoing research project spanning from 2021 to 2023. This research encompasses data from 124 artists specializing in powder brows, hairstrokes, and microblading, primarily based in various EU countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Some artists are affiliated with well-known academies, while others work independently. However, regardless of their location or affiliation, our research shows that the range of roles they must perform is remarkably similar.

2. The 10 Key "Jobs to be Done”

Reality

Our data collection and consultations with artists have identified ten crucial roles for any starting brow artist. Initially, artists suggested various responsibilities, but closer analysis showed that these ten roles encapsulate the most practical tasks new artists encounter.

Expectations

A significant finding relates to the artists' initial expectations. Over 71% of starting artists acknowledged that the variety and number of "jobs to be done" greatly surpassed their initial estimates. Furthermore, more than half of the artists reported that their training programs did not sufficiently prepare them for many, or even most, of these tasks.

Recognizing and planning for these roles is vital for those considering or beginning a career in brow artistry. This understanding acts as a roadmap, helping you decide what tasks to manage yourself and what to delegate. It also offers an estimate of the costs associated with each role.

3. The Artist

It is crucial for a powder brows, hairstrokes, or microblading artist to focus primarily on the artistry of brow creation. This role typically occupies the majority of an artist's time and energy.

In 2024, the importance of marketing and social media content creation for success in the pigmentation industry has grown. However, it's essential to keep the primary goal in focus. While these additional roles are important, reaching the top echelons in the field is nearly impossible if the primary emphasis isn't on crafting high-quality brows, regardless of the technique used. The art of eyebrow creation should remain a pigmentation artist's main priority.

Practical Advice: Dedicate More Time

Allocate a significant portion of your work hours to performing brow procedures. Neglecting this can lead to mediocre results. Your artistry will suffer if too much time is spent waiting for clients or dealing with issues in other business areas. The hands-on skill of creating brows is unique and cannot be outsourced or delegated like other tasks. Concentrate on refining this craft to ensure the highest quality in your work.

4. Accountant

Many brow artists experience panic during audits or when dealing with tax declarations and payments. Tax systems vary by country, but there is significant relief in knowing that all accounting and reporting responsibilities can be taken off an artist's shoulders. It's important to consider your core identity when making this decision. Ask yourself, "Who am I?" If you're not an accountant who also enjoys creating brows, then accounting is a task you should not handle yourself.

Practical Advice: Outsource Entirely

Opt to outsource all your accounting responsibilities. Consider an arrangement where your monthly accounting expenses are closely tied to the number of procedures you perform. This approach is crucial because it factors these expenses into the net cost of each treatment. When starting, minimizing fixed costs is vital. Many experienced artists recommend paying a higher per-invoice charge while maintaining lower fixed monthly expenses for accounting services. This method can be more economical and aligns costs with your business activity.

5. Real-Estate Broker

Choosing the perfect work location is challenging, especially when starting your career in brow artistry. Interviews with seasoned, successful artists reveal many experiences in selecting their initial procedure spaces. What can be learned from these stories? The key lesson is to avoid long-term commitments. As Steve Jobs wisely said, "The future is long," and many variables can come into play. While the time for negotiating an annual lease will eventually arrive, opting for shorter-term arrangements in the early stages is advisable. A common agreement among experienced artists is the importance of minimizing fixed costs. Over 78% of seasoned artists recommend a "pay-as-you-go" structure for renting a salon or workstation, which ties costs to the number of procedures performed, preventing long-term lease commitments before your bookings can justify them.

Practical Advice: Stay Flexible and Avoid Long-Term Commitments

Most artists suggest continuous vigilance when it comes to workspace. Being flexible and constantly seeking new opportunities is recommended. Avoid being tied down to a single location that might limit future options. Essentially, you should act as your real estate broker every few weeks, scouting for new locations or renegotiating existing commitments. The crucial takeaway is to "avoid fixed costs like the plague.”

When bookings begin to fill up weeks in advance and the idea of owning a salon becomes attractive, it's important to resist making impulsive decisions based on a desire for significance. Many successful artists have shown restraint in their role as "real estate professionals," avoiding long-term binding contracts. Notably, the first workspace used by many artists, including their salon station, has often been part of their own home. This is an important consideration before committing to any long-term agreements that may seem attractive in the moment but could lead to unnecessary burdens later.

6. Marketing Strategist

For those embarking on a career in brow artistry, becoming adept as a marketing strategist is crucial. The emphasis here is on the term "strategist." The era when simply producing a large amount of content was sufficient to gain attention has passed. With the decline of organic reach, adopting a strategic approach is more vital than ever.

From a practical standpoint, it's important to recognize that generating leads is contingent on reaching people. In developing a marketing strategy, you must divide your efforts into two main categories: offline and online. In the following sections, we will delve into examples to underscore the significance of strategic thinking instead of merely producing content without direction.

7. Sales Negotiator

The roles of the Marketing Strategist and Sales Negotiator are intimately connected, particularly when considering Offline and Online marketing strategies.

Offline Strategy - The Hunt for Unicorns (Negotiator)

Experienced artists highlight the importance of offline strategy, often focusing on "capturing unicorn models." This strategy involves identifying influencers with suboptimal brows with a significant and credible following, typically around 30,000 or more. Additionally, reaching out to beauticians and salon owners who offer services other than brow pigmentation but cater to your target demographic is key.

Apart from targeted outreach, leveraging your network of friends and family is also effective. Using free time to offer them complimentary treatments can help you gather valuable before-and-after images, forming the crux of your offline strategy.

Many artists in their early stages report dedicating about an hour daily to this "unicorn hunt." This usually involves researching potential contacts such as nail and lash artists or salon owners, examining their brows, and making compelling offers like "free brows for life." Such initiative and strategic negotiation epitomize the role of a Negotiator.

Online Strategy - Maintaining Reach (Marketing Strategist)

For online strategy, the aim is to "maintain reach" to ensure a steady flow of leads. Depending on the size of your local market, you should aim for a social media reach of between 50,000 and 300,000. This typically requires a fixed marketing budget of about $500 to $3,000 monthly. As emphasized by experienced artists, this isn't just a desirable expense but a necessary one.

Practical Advice: Rise Above Blind Content Production

The actual cost can vary greatly depending on the value of your digital assets, like your Instagram followers, Facebook business page, and TikTok audience within your target demographic. However, maintaining this reach is crucial. A substantial organic following, generally 25,000 followers or more, can significantly reduce your marketing expenses.

The roles of Marketing Strategist and Negotiator often intersect. Especially in the early stages of your career, be prepared to dedicate at least an hour each day to these activities and possibly more.

8. Copywriter

The role of the Copywriter is intrinsically linked to that of the Visual Designer, which we will explore next. In maintaining reach, choosing the right channels for boosting posts is essential. However, selecting where to boost becomes irrelevant if you lack valuable content to amplify. Our extensive research on the effectiveness of various types of posts across different social media platforms has shown a significant trend: from the second quarter of 2022 and more notably into 2023, quality has surpassed quantity in importance, particularly on Meta platforms.

Practical Advice: Create Value, Not Digital Trash

This shift in trends brings a critical implication for your strategy. The era of generating a post “just for the sake of posting” has ended. Such posts now yield minimal organic reach and offer limited value, serving only as a signal that your business is operational. Producing high-quality content, both in copy and visuals, is crucial to engage your audience and enhance your brand genuinely.

Content is Both King and Queen

The role of content has evolved; it is no longer just "the King." In today’s digital world, content reigns supreme – the King, the Queen, and the entire royal court. It's the cornerstone of your digital presence. The question is no longer if you need to post but where you will find compelling content to share. This requires a strategic approach to content creation, ensuring that every post conveys value and aligns with your brand's identity and message.

9. Visual Designer

Role of the Visual Designer: Crafting Flawless Design

The interaction between the roles of a visual designer and a copywriter is crucial. The times of simply putting together before-and-after pictures for posts are over. Our research indicates that a strong post should include a carefully curated mix of images, ensuring that all before-and-after shots are high quality. Seasoned designers often use tools like Adobe Photoshop, as quick-fix apps might compromise image quality, particularly for other platforms.

Role of the Copywriter: Crafting 300-400 Words Per Post

The text accompanying a post becomes impactful when it follows a clear narrative, presents a central idea, and is around 300-400 words long. This requires more than just an impromptu "flow of consciousness." Effective messages should meet three criteria: provide valuable information to clients, offer interesting insights about the artist, and highlight specific products or services.

The challenge is not just meeting a 300-400 word count but encapsulating well-thought-out ideas within this "word budget." While AI-generated text may be better than no text, our research confirms that human-written content, which is informative and engaging, is more effective.

Time Investment for Crafting a Post

Quality posts require considerable effort. It's observed that when even one artist adopts a well-executed, aggressive posting strategy, competitors often lose customers. Creating and publishing a high-quality post can take 2 to 3 hours in the best-case scenario without any issues.

Optimal Posting-Frequency: Strategy Matters

Artists typically follow one of three posting frequency strategies: "defensive" (to maintain market share), "slow growth" (to maintain and slightly improve market position), and "aggressive" (to gain new clients rapidly). The required number of weekly posts varies with these strategies, ranging from 3 for defensive, 5 for slow growth, and 7 for aggressive approaches.

Starting in this field requires commitment and competitiveness. Posting a few light posts per week is insufficient. For example, in the aggressive strategy, you might need to dedicate at least 3 hours per day solely to marketing - a significant commitment.

Outsourcing this task is not straightforward either. While services like the Holistic Account model on powderbrows.com offer such assistance, creating five unique, non-AI-produced posts with high-quality visuals comes at a cost. Hiring a reputable digital marketing and PR agency may increase monthly expenses between USD 5,000 and 10,000.

10. Branding Professional

Branding Expert and Full Stack Web Developer with SEO Skills

Launching a successful hairstrokes business involves more than just daily tasks; it includes considering long-term aspects like brand development and website management.

Your efforts should align with your unique brand and differentiating name. This topic has been extensively discussed in our articles on the Hairstrokes.com platform, which can offer additional insights. Delivering your brand image to target demographics requires robust digital development.

These tasks may not be daily, but they are crucial. For instance, repurposing your social media posts into longer articles for your website is a great practice. This enhances your content offerings and lays the groundwork for effective search engine optimization (SEO) and strategic development. While not a daily requirement, this aspect of your business can still demand a significant time investment, possibly 3-5 hours per week.

In essence, being a Branding Professional in the hairstrokes industry means balancing the creative aspects of your work with strategic brand and digital presence management. This dual role ensures that every content, whether a social media post or a web article, contributes to building a cohesive and appealing brand identity. It’s about making your business not just visible but memorable and distinct in a competitive market.

11. Developer

This role transitions us to the developer, well-versed in search engine optimization (SEO). While this competence can be outsourced if financially viable, filling this role with many agencies offering such services is non-negotiable. The trends in 2023 and 2024 indicate a growing reliance on organic search results from search engines, which is unattainable without robust full-stack website development.

Summing up all these responsibilities paints a daunting picture. While a straightforward, all-encompassing solution would be ideal, the reality is that no such magic bullet exists. Local competition in the brow artistry field is intense, and each lead becomes a hard-won prize for the artist with the most effective marketing strategy. The harsh truth is that there are no shortcuts or magic formulas; success hinges on hard work and dedication. It’s about rolling up your sleeves, focusing intently, and preparing for a relentless effort. The industry offers no easy answers or low-hanging fruits to pluck away. The road to success is paved with perseverance, and your toolkit is filled not with silver bullets but with an array of practical, albeit less glamorous, tools to be used diligently, one after the other.

12. Manager

The Capstone Role of the Manager

The key to unifying these multifaceted roles lies in a Manager's final, essential role. At the heart of successful management is time management, a skill that the most successful brow artists have refined to near perfection.

This raises an important question: Is it realistically feasible to manage all these responsibilities single-handedly? The simple answer is yes, it's possible. But even if you are exceptionally skilled, like a "ninja warrior" of the field, you'll find yourself up against significant challenges. The top artists in the industry typically don't work alone; they are supported by a talented team that helps them manage these diverse roles.

In summary, while individual skill and prowess are crucial, the power of collaboration often proves to be a game-changer. The most versatile artist might find it challenging to effectively manage all these roles without the support of a team. So, while starting as a solo artist is common, it’s advisable to consider building a team as you expand your business. Remember, no artist is an island in brow artistry, and teamwork can be the key to unlocking greater success and sustainability.

13. Conclusions

Embarking on a career as a brow artist requires assuming multiple roles, many of which are critical for establishing a foothold in the industry. While some responsibilities can be outsourced or delegated, others demand personal attention due to their integral nature to your artistic identity or the prohibitive cost of outsourcing.

To summarize, the key roles include the following.

Artist: The creative driving force behind brow designs.
Accountant: Manages invoicing and financial records.
Real-Estate Broker: Finds and secures optimal rental spaces.
Marketing Strategist: Effectively navigates digital marketing channels.
Negotiator: Establishes offline connections and identifies valuable influencers.
Visual Designer: Creates visually appealing social media posts, with a frequency of 3-7 posts per week.
Copywriter: Writes engaging captions and texts for posts, around 300-400 words each.
Branding Expert: Develops and nurtures the brow artist's brand over the long term.
Full-Stack Developer: Oversees website development and SEO optimization.
Manager: Coordinates and synchronizes all these roles for effective execution.

Handling all these roles single-handedly, especially when competing against well-resourced teams, is a formidable challenge. The complexity of these tasks can be overwhelming, reflecting the competitive nature of the brow industry. This presents a realistic, albeit challenging, scenario for anyone considering a career in this field. It underscores the importance of artistic talent, strategic planning, business acumen, and the ability to collaborate or juggle multiple responsibilities.