8 Tips To Succeed in Cosmetology School
Cosmetology school is hard. Surviving the first week is tough, and there will be points when you think you might not make it. There are a lot of pressures and stresses during the schooling process. But here, we are going to talk about how to truly succeed in cosmetology school.
For some, they just want to ‘make it through’ beauty school. Let’s aim a little higher…
Let’s succeed, truly thrive, not just survive.
Here are eight tips to help you succeed in cosmetology school from start to finish.
How to Succeed in Cosmetology School
What do you mean by ‘Survive and Thrive’?
The jitters, excitement, like waking up Christmas morning but dreading a new experience at the same time because it’s scary. Beauty school is intimidating, and it is hard work.
Drop-out rates in beauty schools (cosmetology, barbering, etc.) are impressively high. Which is truly unfortunate. Many people start beauty school expecting it to be easy, but it’s actually hard work!
How to Prepare for Cosmetology School
The key to surviving and thriving in cosmetology school is DETERMINATION.
You MUST keep your eyes on the prize. Watch the end goal. Graduation is less than a year away from when you begin your training. There are struggles, but you CAN AND WILL overcome them!
Now, let’s talk about how to go about keeping yourself motivated and determined throughout your training so that you truly thrive.
For tips on how to research beauty schools and what you should look out for please see, Should I go to Beauty School? How to choose the RIGHT Beauty School.
🚩 Look out for the red flags, don’t sign up for convenience or because the school offers a better price.
How to Make it Through Cosmetology School – Truly Thrive not just survive
Tip 1 How to Succeed in Cosmetology School – Setting Expectations
Make sure you are in a prepared headspace for your first day. Treat it like Christmas. You are excited, expectant, ready to work hard for what you want. This is another key to thriving in beauty school.
Expect to succeed! Expect and do your utmost to give it your absolute best!
Write out your expectations for the first week, then the first half of the training, and then what you expect when you graduate.
Look at your list. Are your expectations personal? Or are they all about what the school can do for you? Or both?
How to Get the Most out of Beauty School
Here is one thing you must expect if you want to succeed in cosmetology school.
👉 SHOW UP. That’s half of the battle. Even if you’re tired, exhausted, and have a million things to do at home and another job to go to afterward. It’s a lot of hours, and there may be things or people that you aren’t looking forward to facing once you clock in, but it’s worth it!
Keep your eyes on the prize! Beat the odds. Graduate with flying colors. Just show up!
There will be drama. There’s no avoiding it in a school environment. Therefore, what will you now EXPECT OF YOURSELF to get through it?
Come up with a game plan, or a list of goals, if you’re like me.
👉 Make a set of rules and expectations to hold yourself accountable to. If you have the determination to make this list of expectations and goals for yourself, I guarantee, you will thrive.
12 Things I Wish I Knew Before Beauty School
Tip 2 on How to Succeed in Cosmetology School – Fitting In
Getting the most out of beauty school means you have higher priorities than fitting into the ‘clicks’.
You are attending cosmetology school to succeed, not to fit in. If you happen to fit in, that’s awesome! But don’t worry if you don’t.
Fitting in isn’t your goal. You will survive if you don’t, but if you keep your eyes on the prize, you will truly thrive. Whether you have friends in your class or not.
To be quite honest, I have been licensed for 8 years and I haven’t talked to or kept up with a single person from my cosmetology graduating class. And if I ever look them up, only 2 or 3 of them are actually doing hair. Don’t start cosmetology school expecting to make life-long friends. Forgive me for being so abrupt but it’s just not realistic.
Cosmetology school, and Barber school too, form clicks. It happens in every line of work in one way or another. In the beauty industry, the clicks happen to involve more drama than is comfortable for most people.
Now, I encourage you, don’t avoid making friends. Be kind to those you don’t quite see eye-to-eye with. Figure out how you can work alongside them without putting them down. Or them, you.
You want to get along as well as you can with your classmates. You’ll all be spending a lot of time together while finishing your school hours before taking your licensing exam. And who knows, you might even get a job with one or two of them, so don’t make enemies!
Tip 3 on How to Succeed in Cosmetology School – Focus
Keep your eye on the prize. Graduation. Obtaining a license to legally practice the profession that we love.
Thriving in school takes tremendous concentration. Serious focus.
Make another list, separate from the one above about your expectations. What motivates you?
This doesn’t have to be a long list, just write the first few things that come to mind. Your kids? The family business? Dreams come true?
Why are you going to beauty school and what fuels your determination to finish your training?
After you consider the list above and it’s been written out, leave it somewhere that you will see every day. A bathroom mirror, maybe, and remember that even though it’s a year (or so) of schooling THOSE reasons are why you WILL graduate.
Focusing on why you are doing what you are doing is an enormous step in truly thriving in your pursuits.
Tip 4 How to Succeed in Cosmetology School – You Reap What You Sow
Hard work looks different for everyone. No two people have the same strengths.
In cosmetology school, not all subjects ‘click’. For some color is their thing. It just makes sense. For others, maybe cutting. Comparing yourself to other students’ work or successes for the sake of comparison is dangerous, and unproductive.
Allow your fellow classmates who have strengths different from yours to raise the bar. Let their confidence or talent in their strength be your goal in that subject. Once you reach that level, raise the bar again.
Settling in just knowing the material that you learn in class isn’t enough to be successful. If you put in a half-hearted effort to absorb and perfect the techniques and skills you are learning, you will only receive half-hearted results.
Have you ever heard of the phrase, ‘you reap what you sow’? Reaping is an old word for harvesting. Sowing is an old word for planting. It means you will only harvest what you plant. If you don’t try to plant what you need to survive, it won’t grow and you’ll go hungry or go without whatever it is you need to survive.
Thus in beauty school (cosmetology and barber school) in order to thrive and succeed, you have to give it your best and you will get the best results in return.
Tip 5 – Practice
No matter how much studying you do, how book-smart you are, if you don’t put those theories to work and practice the techniques for yourself, your knowledge will do you no good in the hair world. There comes a point to test them out for yourself.
Experiment! Have fun! Because let me tell you this, hair is SO much fun!
Try out new styles, new colors, new techniques for yourself. Whether it be on your mannequins, friends, daughters, sisters, models, or fellow students.
Put to work everything you are learning in theory and on the salon floor while there are instructors to help you. But once you’re licensed and practicing on your own in a salon, still experiment!
Try new styles, colors, and techniques. Watch videos, or be inspired by everyday things like oil stains in the parking lot, or clouds in the sky. Look at shapes and angles, and what your interpretation of that on a model might look like. How can you get your inspiration onto a person?
Again, like we said before, reap what you sow, so practice as much as you can! And in beauty school you will have plenty of downtime to play and have fun on your mannequin’s hair.
The more you practice the better you’ll be! It’s 100% percent true that practice makes perfect.
Tip 6 – Watching Others
Many people in the hair industry are visual people. We learn by seeing. Maybe not everybody functions this way, but working as a hairstylist or barber takes a lot of visual propensity and skill.
Watching other professionals work is a tool to be utilized at every stage of your career. Even professionals that have been in the industry for 20 years or longer still learn by watching each other.
I had a cosmetology school instructor that would use this phrase, ‘There are 500 ways to get to the airport!’ But it didn’t make sense to me until she explained it.
It doesn’t matter how you get to the airport, in the end, you still get there right? No two people cut hair in the same way, every technique is different because it sits in each individual’s hands differently. There are 500 ways to get the same results.
Some methods may be more practical, or efficient, but that doesn’t mean that the task is being done in the wrong way. Learn all 500 ways to get to the airport.
Figure out which one is most comfortable for you, but don’t stop learning or trying new techniques because you’ve figured it out. Watch! Watch everyone, and ask them questions about how and why they do it that way.
Watching videos can be helpful. There is some very helpful content and step-by-step tutorials out there for those just starting out. But there is something to be said about learning in person.
Unfortunately, some might not be able to do this in school. For those, I strongly recommend getting a job in a salon as a receptionist while you are still in training before you have your license. That would be the best opportunity to see firsthand what salon life is like and you can ask your co-workers questions about the things you are learning at school.
Be A Sponge!
Absorb different methods and techniques, and testing them out for yourself will help you thrive as a stylist or barber once you graduate. Start these habits now, in school, make thriving a habit.
Tip 7 – Building a Clientele, even in Beauty School
Building a clientele isn’t as hard as you think. And yes, the sooner you start the better!
It takes a lot of strategy and practice, what better place to practice than in beauty school?
For your business to thrive, not just you as a professional but your business too, you MUST know how to retain a clientele.
The first and most important key to this is to not let your client feel pressured by you. The less pressured they feel, the more likely they will want to rebook with you and be able to build a relationship and trust you as their hairstylist. If they choose to buy product, let it be their choice, if they’re buying the product because you recommended it is because they trust you.
Pass out extra business cards to the guests you already have in your chair. Just say, “Here, I’ll give you a couple extra, if you give them all away I’ll just give you more next time.”
Then, of course, you ask if they’d like to prebook their next appointment with you now before they go. You have a busy schedule and want to make sure they can get in when they need a haircut, and if when they receive their reminder text about their appointment it’s easy to change if they need to. Take the pressure off of them NEEDING to come back to you, and NEEDING to come back when YOU tell them to. Let it be their decision.
I, personally, have tested and used these tricks to successfully build and keep my clientele in 6 months, and they still follow me years later!
For all of the tips, we don’t have enough time to add them all to this article, please see 11 Tips on How Get Hair Clients Fast.
Tip 8 – Preparing to Get a Job
Last but not least, the eighth key to learning how to thrive and succeed in cosmetology school AND in your career behind the chair it is important to prepare yourself for your first salon job.
How you prepare for your first interview, before or after you take your state board exam, will help you in how you prepare for every job you get from that point forward. And even starting your own shop someday if you want.
Expect to push yourself, do the absolute best that you can do, keep your eyes on the end goal. These are the first and beginning of being prepared.
Most salons have a two-part interview process. A typical, sit-down interview, and a practical interview when you bring a model and do a haircut or a color (the salon will tell you what they want to see). Sometimes both are done in one visit, others may want to only talk first and have you come back later with your model for the practical.
DO NOT interview at the first shop that you see. Just like attending the nearest or cheapest beauty school might not be the best choice, working for the nearest and most convenient shop might not be the best either.
Being prepared to work in a salon means that YOU also INTERVIEW THEM!
If you want to succeed, you have to know what kind of a shop environment will be good for you to learn in, build in, be encouraged in, and grow in.
I recommend looking out for the red flags when you interview the shop listed in 15 Questions to Ask at a Salon Interview.
☑️ Is the shop clean?
☑️ Are the other stylists smiling and friendly?
☑️ Is the manager present or absent?
27 Questions to Ask a Salon Owner
☑️ What do the clients look like when they walk in and do they look better and happier when they leave?
Whatever kind of a reputation the shop has, you will have too when you work there.
Set yourself up for success.
20 Questions to Ask a Cosmetology School