The long way

I became a student at Paul Mitchell The School Temecula, part of a network known as the “Harvard” of its field. After graduating I went into the industry, doing nails at iCandy Nails in Oceanside, then came back to the school at the front desk. From there I grew through role after role, into management, and later co-directed Paul Mitchell The School East Bay.

I taught from the black Milady book and led State Board classes, and as a Future Professional Advisor I coached our students, the future professionals, all the way to their exams. I am the one on camera in the school’s training video: setting up a station on the rows for a student, the worksheets every student completes to test out, and the exams they perform on models.

I taught makeup with the Future Professional Makeup Academy alongside Robert Jones, and wrote its training manual and the systems that run it. It still runs today, with Temecula as its flagship. I grew under some of the best leadership I have ever known, and it grew my love for people: coaching, art, and looking for the beauty in everything. Running a school taught me that people learn by making something real, not by watching someone else make it.

Real estate found its way back to me, and so did marketing. For seven years I built the marketing and the brand beside JD Diaz, a top 1% producer in the Las Vegas Valley, across four brokerages. Films for luxury homes, websites, campaigns: the brand and the marketing busy people never have time to do themselves. Filming luxury homes taught me more than any class could.

It was one of the most rewarding careers I have had, and one of the most trying. I learned how a brand is made, how trust is earned one client at a time, and how much work it takes to make something look effortless.