What’s your mission in the beauty industry? Beyond your motivations, goals and definition of success, a mission reflects your priorities and guides your actions throughout your career.
“The most extraordinary people in the world today don’t have a career. They have a mission.” – Vishen Lakhiani
Not surprisingly, many beauty professionals focus solely on themselves as if our success depends on the failure of others. To be fair, it’s only natural to protect our self-interests, evaluating threats and opportunities in terms of potential risks or rewards for our individual careers. However, this selfish and insular view limits our collective potential to contribute to one of the most dynamic and diverse industries in the world.
We would be better served if we honored what connects us: the fact that we all work within the beauty industry.
Competing and exploiting the weaknesses of others to ensure our own survival (professionally-speaking), are we capable of working together to defend our territory? Our territory could be defined as anything that impacts the beauty industry, from government oversight and worker rights to product safety and consumer trends.
Take deregulation, a consistent threat. Beauty pros have many frustrations about how their state government regulates our industry, ranging from the education requirements and licensing fees to inspections and enforcement. That being said, we tend to value our licensure because it’s ours, not because it’s perfect. What profession has the perfect licensing system? None that I’m aware of, but that’s no excuse for apathy. When we fail to acknowledge our shortcomings and the need for improvement, we cede power to those who neither understand our industry nor have our best interests in mind.
From the least experienced students to the most recognized professionals, we share mutual interests that transcend our differences, cross boundaries and defy labels, political or otherwise.
Just as we cannot become politically aware only at election time, we need to be more proactive when seemingly nothing important happens. Often times, we don’t pay attention or connect with others in our industry unless we feel personally threatened. Don’t wait for a call to action. The time to voice our opinions and take action is each and every day. Inform your legislators, particularly at the state level, about the work you do and your contribution to the economy and society at large. Share your positions before they propose or support something you’d oppose, if only you knew about it. Political momentum can be very difficult to overcome, no matter how unwise the policy.
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” – Maya Angelou
As individuals, we have our own interests, talents, skills and resources. If our professional connections are more transactional than transformational, we waste our efforts and squander the opportunity to be more productive. Working together, we would be an even greater force. To accomplish what exactly? That’s a valid question. What is your mission, and what’s ours together?
An earlier version was published by Beauty Cast Network.