In this episode of the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast, host Erika Radis and co‑host Marie Lifschultz interview the owner and artist of Vanillosa Beauty Studios, a licensed esthetician, permanent‑makeup artist, and instructor. The guest shares her journey from opening her first studio in California to expanding in San Antonio, describing how motherhood drove her to create a business that lets her spend more time with her children. She discusses the challenges of balancing work and family, the evolution of her service offerings (brows, lashes, chemical peels, facials, permanent makeup), and the importance of setting boundaries such as a 3 p.m. Friday cutoff. The conversation delves into industry misconceptions—especially the myth that permanent makeup is “semi‑permanent”—and explains the science behind ink types, carbon‑based versus non‑carbon inks, opacity, and safety concerns like traction alopecia from lash extensions. As an instructor, she emphasizes teaching the truth, staying current with trends, and sharing knowledge rather than gate‑keeping. Business advice includes identifying a target market of working‑mom small‑business owners, competing on skill and expertise rather than price, and communicating value. She recommends starting clients with brow work, using short‑lifespan inks for hesitant clients, and highlights the time‑saving benefits of permanent makeup for busy moms. The episode also promotes the Working Moms of San Antonio community and coworking memberships as a supportive space for local mom entrepreneurs.
Welcome to the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast, where your host Erika Radis and Marie Lifschultz, a realtor and lender here in San Antonio, but most importantly, we're working moms just like you.
This podcast is all about creating a space where we can come together, share stories, and learn from each other. We love connecting with local moms in business Hearing about their journeys and how they're balancing it all, because let's be honest, it's not always easy, but it's so worth it.
Before we dive in today's episode, we're excited to share some big news with you all.
Our business community and coworking memberships are officially open. Whether you're looking for a supportive community of moms in business or need a beautiful space to work and grow, we've got just what you need here at Working Moms of San Antonio. You can visit the link in our show notes. Or workingmomsofsanantonio.com/membership for more info.
Now onto today's episode. Grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's get started.
I'm the owner and artist of Vanillosa Beauty Studios. I'm an esthetician, a licensed esthetician, and also a permanent makeup artist and an instructor. In our beauty studio, we do lashes, we do chemical peels, we do facials, and of course, permanent makeup. San Antonio has been amazing to us, and it's been, it's been, I'm very grateful to be here. Opened up my first place just because, you know, as I started having children or had my first son, I kind of wanted to spend more time with him. And, you know, for all of us working moms, it's kind of, we feel this need to be with our kids 24/7, but you still have to provide and you still need something for yourself, which is like a really hard place to be. So I kind of decided to open up my first location in California. And after that, it kind of snowballed into like, okay, what else is there? The beauty industry is huge, huge, huge, huge. Most people, when they think about the beauty industry, they kind of just think hair or makeup, but it's aesthetics, it's permanent makeup. It's— now there's body contouring. As I started getting a little bit more into the beauty industry, I saw that, okay, well, now I can do lash extensions and that's really going to keep me at home. I was doing makeup, but I was doing it on set. So when you're on set, your, your days, your full days are 12 hours. And 12 hours means 14. It does not mean 12. You know, half days are not 5, they're 6 or 8 hours travel anyway. So I was away from my son so much and I decided to open up the first one and then I was like, what if I did makeup here? So then that went well. And then I said, what if I do lashes? So it kind of snowballed, I guess. And I just, I love being around other, other women and I love my clients and I kind of, I kind of found a home there. In the beauty industry. And so I just kept growing and kept growing, you know. And I feel honestly like after 12 years, I'm, I'm barely understanding really what the industry is and really what it is to be a working mom and a business owner. I also teach, and a lot of the women that come to me, they kind of do say like, I just want to spend my time with my kids. And I'm like, well, you may or may not be able to do that, you know. So now I'm finding it after so long. I'm a mom of 3 boys. So after 12 years, I'm barely finding my balance now where, you know, okay, so I decided I'm only going to work till 3 o'clock on Fridays, or I'm going to take these 2 days and I'm going to go see my kids in karate and jiu-jitsu. And so it's, it's a hard balance. And I think I'm barely finding it now after 12 years. I think when you're starting a new business, kind of, it's kind of like you're saying, you know, you kind of do have to come in with some kind of attitude where like, I can do it, but also like, I don't know everything. And in the, when you've been in the industry, any industry for so long, you kind of get to a point where you feel like you know a lot, but you still don't know everything. And it's really hard to open up yourself. Let me, it's very figureoutable. Yeah. You know, in the beginning I wasn't, I wasn't ready. I feel for the business portion of it. So I made quite a bit of money, but I didn't know how to, how to proportion my time properly. And I was packing too much and, doesn't matter that money's coming in if you can't spend it or you can't see your kids, you know. A lot of misconceptions in the permanent makeup industry just because it's fairly new. So, you know, a lot of the times it's called a semi— it's semi-permanent, but it's, it's a tattoo. You can't untattoo somebody. It's permanent, you know. And I think that's one of the scariest parts that I've seen in the beauty industry. But like I said, anytime any industry grows, I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions and a lot of lies and a lot of things that aren't true. So I've made it my mission, in addition now to just being an artist, I've made it my, my, my mission to really teach the truth behind permanent makeup. You know, I myself have tattoos and I've had them for 15, 17 years and they're not semi-permanent. They're still here. Yeah. And I feel like, I feel like once you start sharing what you know and sharing your information and you, you're not gatekeeping I think you grow as an artist and you also grow as in whatever it is you're doing in your field, just because it's kind of like relearning everything, you know, because the more you regurgitate information, the more you're learning and it's making more sense to you. So I've ever since I started teaching it, like, um, disseminating information, I feel like I've definitely grown more myself because I take a pause and I'm like, okay, well, why am I teaching this? And what makes this true? Every year, it's, it's our industry is huge. So every year I'm like learning something new. And now I'm, I'm passing on that information to small business owners when they want to hear it, you know, just business information that I, I wish I had 10 years ago. So because it's our stuff is based on trends, of course. So what'll happen is that some, something that didn't work 5 years ago, all of a sudden somebody thinks they're going to make it work, so it comes back. And you know, the thing is, these things have permanent repercussions, but it kind of gets recycled every 3 to 5 years, and these people think they have— they finally, you know, made it work, but nobody's made it work because it just doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, there's all this constant misinformation, and then on top of staying— and then so as an instructor, I have to stay on top of those trends and, and say like, hey, this doesn't work. It didn't work the last 10 times I tried to introduce it, it's not going to work now. But it's growing, man. Our industry is growing so, so quickly. It's great to see. One of the things I love to do is permanent eyeliner, but our eyes change so much, you know, like they'll fall down a little bit. Yeah.
Yeah.
And nothing— unfortunately, nothing stays the same forever. So that's one of my main things that I do try to, try to explain to my clients, like, hey, this is permanent. Your face is changing. So this can't be out to here because, you know, in 5 years, 10 years, it'll be down to here. And so one of the things that's really hard is explaining just, just that, like, we have to say things are changing. So this particular ink that you keep saying and using and that's super popular, maybe you don't want to use because it— just because you want your eyebrows like this today doesn't mean they're going to look good, you know, 10 years from now. So that's— I've taken that as part of my, my job. That's, that's going to be what I decided a couple of years ago. That's going to be my job. I'm going to give true information. And so when I teach, I tell my students, I teach them to be masters of the craft and not just do permanent makeup. It's not the same, you know. So I teach molecular size of specific ink. I teach the way carbon-based ink is different from non-carbon-based ink. Why and how you should use this and that. I teach why we shouldn't— why you don't want so much opacity in ink. And I don't feel like there's enough people in my industry anyway teaching that. And again, it's permanent. So you have to be really careful about anything that you're putting in the skin because it's kind of forever. So I would say a lot of my— a lot of— most of my clients are working moms. And actually a majority of that is small business owners as well, which is what I find really interesting. I think it's because of the time saving. Like, we all kind of want to save time.
Yeah.
No, I usually recommend that they start off with the brows. And what I like to do when somebody is really iffy about it or kind of scared, I just— I use a particular type of ink that has a lifespan of about 2 years, which I think is great because, you know, you might know, you might, you might not want to do them in 2 years anymore. You know, there's also a way to deposit ink into the skin. With forever ink so that it's really not forever. So I usually tell my clients that come in, if they don't know what to do, they just kind of want to update a look. I say, do brows, do brows. Brows really do change your face and they make you look a little younger. Any time I see anybody with thin eyebrows, it does age you a little bit. It does. Yeah. Frame around your eyes. Yeah. So I do a lot of brows because of that, because everybody's either trying to— we're all trying to save time. Spend more time with their kids or running after the kids or yelling at the kids. But the kids are with me. As working moms, you know, in the— the lash enhancement just goes in between your eyelashes. And so it makes your actual lashes look darker. In the— so you don't have this thick eyeliner. For me, that's what I'm going to do for myself. I'll probably go just above my lash line and into my lash line. I just haven't had time to tattoo my own face. It's like everything else. As, as, as an industry is growing, especially with ours, you get a lot of people that want to come in and make some quick cash, you know, like in every industry. But with us, you can cause some permanent damage. Yeah. You know, if when I, when I'm teaching, because I also teach lashes, so when I'm teaching lashes, we talk about traction alopecia on eyelashes, you know, and a lot of people don't talk about that. But that, that's a thing. It can actually happen. You can cause traction alopecia and permanent damage on the lash line if you don't apply them properly. And if they start pulling, all the lashes are coming off together, it can— yeah, so officially then you won't have any eyelashes. It's the first thing you see because they're, you know, you have lashes, all of a sudden it's naked, like right here. They're to make a quick buck. And then who's there really to add value to your life? Even if it's just taking off, you know, 10 minutes from drawing in your eyebrows. I've met so many, so many women in our— in my industry who come and go and then they can't stay because, you know, they don't add value. It's like you're saying, they come in, they make a quick buck and they leave and nobody cares to do that anymore. But also to what you were saying, and I, and I talked to this, uh, I tried to talk to this, I tried to talk about finding your target market to a lot of my students. Not everybody's for everybody. You do not have to compete with pricing. You compete with your skills and with your knowledge. And how you help them. But, and you know, not, not everybody's for everybody. Not everybody's my target market. And I understand that. And that's okay. But when you speak to your target market, those people will pay for your skills, for your knowledge, and for the amount of time that you've been in your industry. I feel like in the beauty world, we kind of do that thing where we're like, oh, I feel bad for charging. And I, yeah, like that's a, that's a woman trait. It really is. Men are like, let's do it for free. No, no. We also have value. You know, I, and I tell everybody, there's this funny story that I always tell people when they ask me, because so I do a lot of corrections, right? So people who have previously worked, they went somewhere really cheap and they, they, they kind of go, well, maybe I shouldn't have done that. So in California, I fixed $1,200 eyebrows. So this particular woman, I fixed, I don't know, maybe 5, 6, 7 brows of hers. So this, this woman, she has a lot of the likes, a lot of the follows, a lot of picture perfect. But she never posts full on because I had a client whose eyebrows were black, black. I'm telling you, blacker than my hair. And they were like this. Oh no. And she paid $1,200 and then she had her car towed because this is LA. In LA, you just can't park anywhere. They'll tow your ass. So she paid for the tow. She paid for her eyebrows. The lady was like, I mean, it was a mess, this poor girl. And then her eyebrows were horrible to the point where I kind of told her, like, listen, there's very, very little I can do. So I'm going to try my best, but I mean, they're still crooked, but you know, she had all the likes and she had all the follows and stuff. And you, you got to speak to just your people in H-Town. We're not for everybody, you know, but yeah, target market will find you and you'll find them. It's, it's a huge city. I don't want all the clients. God, no, I don't want all the clients. Not all the clients are for me and that's okay. So my favorite thing has always been the amount of growth in what I do. So there's just so much information to consume and so much information that's coming out. That's honestly my favorite thing. When I find out that somebody's doing something and I haven't heard of it or I haven't tried it, I will obsess with it until I understand it. And I love that obsession, that crazy part of me that says I have to know this. And I have to understand it to a T. That's my favorite thing, honestly. Like, there's so many trends coming out because, like we were talking about, it is, it is a trendy thing in the beauty industry. My favorite part is consuming knowledge in our industry. And so I can talk to anybody that has been doing this for 20 years or 3 years and talk about everything in our industry just because I'm such a consumer of knowledge. So that's my favorite thing. And so women that have been doing it for this long, as long as I have, For some reason, not all of us like to share our knowledge. We kind of try to, a lot of us try to gatekeep. Our industry is still changing and growing. So I feel like there's, there's enough for everybody. It's okay to exchange information. And I've done that and sometimes it's not reciprocated, which I, you know, you kind of learn and you move on. Sure. But yeah, the best way to get to grow your industry, if you're really passionate and you love it, is just to share information.
Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast. We hope you love today's chat and found a little inspiration to take with you into your week. If you have a podcast topic suggestion or a question you'd love for us to cover, definitely send us an email at hello@workingmomsofsanantonio.com. We'd love to hear from you, and until next time, see you in the community.
