No joke, gel nail lifting used to rob me of my joy of doing nails.
I can remember vividly, being on an outing with my husband, not enjoying one bit of our 2 hour-away getaway because someone had left me a bad review about their nails lifting. And it was not a unicorn experience.
On top of that, I had a message here and there on my phone from other clients whose nails were also lifting.
These occurrences started to shake me and my business to our core, and I was determined to master doing nails.
But here was the thought provoking dilemma for me… What kind of nails?
You see at this point in my nail career I was doing it all. Like literally, acrylic nails, hard gel, regular polish mani pedis, and gel polish. And I was quite literally a master of none.
But there was a type of nail that sort-of lit me up inside more than others, and that was gel nails.
And the funny thing is that, the whole reason why I went to school to learn nails, was to learn gel nails.
I was like you, here on YouTube, watching tutorial by tutorial to learn how to do gel nails, and I was quite frankly tired of piecing it all together, and so I thought, I”ll just go to nail school they’ll take me by the hand and teach me step-by-step.
After all, that’s why you’re paying them right? To get you there faster. I was wrong, but I learned that 3 months later when I finished nail school, and had literally spent the last few thousand dollars in my savings account.
Nail school (at least in many states) is structured primarily to help you pass your state board exams. And the state board cares primarily about safety as it pertains to sanitation disinfection.
They don’t care about what you want to specialize in or who in the room is the absolute best at a sculpted acrylic nail.
Now of course, there are exceptions.
Some nail tech programs hire nail techs or instructors who go above and beyond to teach their students outside the book.
Shoutout to Ms. Kathy and Miss Tomanika who both happen to be in Las Vegas. Both are loyal subscribers and have taken a few courses of mine to enrich themselves but also their students. How beautiful is that?
But otherwise, sanitation disinfection, nail that, graduate and pass your state boards, and that’s nail school in a jist.
So yeah, I realized that acrylic was not really my jam, later I finally came to feel the same way about nail polish, and there was still this lingering affinity towards gel nails.
So I kept both hard gel and soft gels at my station. And I was starting to attract my ideal clientele by narrowing things down.
Except, I was still getting inconsistent results.
My soft gel applications were doing better than my hard gels, but again both were still hit or miss as far as retention.
And I had raised my prices, after specializing, or at least doing what I thought was specializing. So when you do that (increase your prices) but you’re not mastering long wear, well that can often lead to losing a valuable customers.
And research shows that it is 5xs harder to gain a client than to keep one. So your goal IS to keep as many clients as possible that sit at your desk.
Long story short, after you niche down, all the way down to what services and products you want to work on and with, there’s one big thing left for you to do.
Find and follow your application steps over and over again.
You see initially when I first started, I was offering it all, and every nail system has a way to be applied. So imagine, I was doing acrylic, hard gel, soft gel, nail polish, silk wrapped overlays. Which meant I had to train my brain to know the steps to try and master each one of these nail systems.
And as a newbie independent, also trying to build a clientele it was stressful to say the least.
It wasn’t until I niched down, all the way down that I was able to build the muscle memory to know my steps for my 3 gel nail services very fluidly.
I niched down from…
- gel nails,
- to soft gel only
- to potted soft gel
- to now Japanese potted soft gel.
And so the BIG reason why you are not mastering gel nails is because you don’t have your steps down to execute your services efficiently.
And if you don’t have a step-by-step for all of your services. You won’t know where to start troubleshooting when you experience gel nail lifting.
Every time you sit down with yourself or a client, you have to have fluidity in your application, and this comes from knowing your step 1, then step 2, then step 3, etc. etc.
If you don’t have a step-by-step and you would like to learn my exact steps for my two signature salon services,
I’m hosting a very special edition of the Master Gel Nails Course in August.
In the meantime, I’m sharing the 3 biggest gel nail lifting problems- And how to fix them, in a 3 part series to help you master those culprits that cause the gel product to lift or chip off of the natural nail, … when it’s only been just a few days.
Sign up to that series here. You’ll get the first problem and solution in your inbox (make sure to check your spam folder).
I hear ya. You continue to get that lifting at the free edge or cuticle area, and it drives you mad! And to fix those problems, you buy this new dehydrator, this new bonder, this new amazing rubber base. But no longer, save your money, and get started with mastering that gel nail lifting by signing up to receive my 3 tips for gel nail lifting.
I’ll send you the first tip, right after signing up.
To get better, to get faster, to be able to start troubleshooting and mastering gel nails, we have to, have to, know our steps in application like turning on and putting the car on drive. Because then you’ll be able to trace your steps backwards and understand what the real culprit is when you encounter gel nail lifting.
That is it for me today, I’ll see you in the next one, and don’t forget to sign up to get those gel nail lifting tips, using the link in the description below.
Bye for now.
