Mac interview

Mackenzie, an esthetician, talks about the challenges of marketing herself online after unexpectedly starting her own business. She finds social media time-consuming, more than performing services. Clients mainly come through word of mouth but some from social media. Instagram is her preferred platform. Mackenzie feels pressured to post perfectly for her business, preferring to focus on improving services. She wishes small business owners weren't expected to be full-time content creators on social media. Hey guys, I'm here with my friend Mackenzie Morrison. Mackenzie, can you introduce yourself and say hello? Hi, I'm Mackenzie and I'm an esthetician. I graduated in 2020 and I've had my own business for the last year. So today we are talking about the social media side of your business and how you've been granted the responsibility of having to market yourself online. My first question is, did you feel prepared to market yourself online or did you know that it was going to be a requirement in order to get your clients in? No, right out of school I didn't think that I was going to be running my own business. I thought I would be more in a spa setting. And having clients just kind of brought to me instead of having to find them my own. But then last minute I ended up taking the opportunity to go into the solo side of aesthetics. And that is when I realized that social media will be a much bigger deal than I thought it was going to be. And the time commitment. How much of a time commitment would you say it is to make posts and post constantly? I would say it's more time taken just to market myself on social media than it is to actually do a service or do anything hands on. Like, I think that it takes a lot more time to create content and upload it and think about things that are relevant to today's day and age than it does to actually sit down and perform a service. And I think it's almost more important than actually being a good aesthetician nowadays. Yeah, so speaking of that, how do most of your clients actually find you? I would say most clients find me by word of mouth and just from friends and family. But I do have some that just randomly pop up from social media from me posting a reel or a post. And sometimes I do get some from the salon that I work at or the salon that I work inside of. I rent a room from them. They will post on their main Instagram and refer clients to us. But I would say mostly word of mouth. So on your social media accounts, which one is the one that you would say gets the most attention or is the most successful in getting views? I would say Instagram is probably the most user friendly and easier for me to work with at least. TikTok is still very new to me and I don't quite understand it and it's kind of unpredictable and random. But I think Instagram is definitely the easiest way to find new clients and get myself out there. So I feel like I've watched you from the moment you decided to rent the room in the salon to the place you are now. And I feel like you've had to teach yourself a lot along the way on how to post and how to do this and do that. Have you ever considered actually hiring someone to manage your social media so you can just focus on being an aesthetician? I have thought about it a few times, but when I actually sit down and think about it, it's not something financially that is realistic. And then I try and do it myself. It is difficult, but I don't think realistically for someone starting out that that's an expense that they could pay. So I feel like from your own personal Instagram, I've never gotten the vibe that you're uncomfortable about posting. So I'm interested to what the difference is between posting on your regular personal account to posting on your Skin by Mac account. Yeah, I've never had any issues posting just in my day to day or overthinking what I post to market myself. But when it comes to business and having to rely on it financially, I think there's a lot more pressure behind it and wanting every post to be perfect and other people to approve because I do need other people to approve of my business if I want to get clients. So how would you feel? How would you say the pressure of running your own social media? What kind of effect does that have on your actual business? It's kind of like a rewording of another question. The original question was, do you ever feel pressured to constantly post? But now I'm asking, what does the pressure of having to do social media on your own put on like the rest of your business? Does that make sense? So what would you say that the pressure of having to run your own social media profiles? Well, you kind of like just got done saying that there is a lot of pressure. And this question is, do you ever feel pressure? So I'm trying to say, how does all that pressure negatively affect your business? So how would you say that all the pressure affects your business at its core? I would say that at the end of the day, it affects my business a lot because I'm focusing more on social media and what other people are thinking and how to get my name out there on social media when it's such a saturated industry right now. And I would like to rather be focusing on furthering my education, getting better at services besides or instead of trying to come off as an influencer online. So all that being said, if you could change one thing about how social media has affected small business owners, what would it be? I would say it would be the expectation that small business owners have to be full-time content creators to stay relevant. While social media is helpful, but it can also blur the lines between a running business. So that being said, if you could change one thing about how social media affects small business owners and yourself, what would it be? I would say it would be the expectation that small business owners have to be full-time content creators just to stay relevant. But I think social media is also helpful, but it can blur the line between running a business and just being performative online. But at the end of the day, I think the goal is to build a sustainable business and not just a social media presence. Yeah, well, thank you Mackenzie for answering all my questions. We made it through. And thank you all for joining us today. Thank you for having me. And plug it again. Plug the ad again. Skin by Mac on Instagram. Skin by Mac on Instagram. You heard it here first. Thank you guys.