Angie Patterson

Esthetician/Educator

After high school I had no clue what I wanted to do--I almost joined the Navy (those recruiters are super convincing!), but the day before I was going to leave for the fitness test, I got an acceptance letter from UNC Chapel Hill. It's an awesome school and I was honored to get in, so I chose to go that route and hoped I would find what I wanted to do there. Due to health issues, I withdrew my junior year. I had a strong interest in the music industry, so I enrolled in an audio engineering program in Ohio. Pretty quickly realized unless I got a job in TV or radio, this probably wasn't going to pay the bills. So I was at a point where I just needed a job, any job. I saw an ad for front desk at a local day spa, and thought that sounded nice! Free massages! So that's how I got started in this industry. I went from front desk to call center manager to IT manager to HR/Operations manager of three locations in 6 years. In that time, I had gotten married and was ready to have kids. But my 60+ hour work weeks were not going to work once kids came along. Because I did payroll, I knew what estheticians made--most made more than my salary in half the time! So I decided I would go to esthetics school, then spent the next 6 years as an esthetician at that spa. It was one of my clients that told me what sugaring was! I had never heard of it, but she went on and on about how much better it was. She got me curious enough to get certified, so I looked for a class--the closest one was with Jessica Mock in GA (6 hrs away!). I grew all my hair out for 3 months because I wanted to see if sugaring was really that much better. Jessica had time to do my Brazilian at the end of class and I couldn't believe how much less painful it was. I knew sugaring was what I wanted to do, but the spa didn't offer it. Mabel from Tapira worked with me at that spa and had tried to convince the owner to switch, but no luck. In the end it worked out great for me and Mabel! But it was two years of practicing on friends and family here and there before I had the courage to leave the spa and start my own business in 2015. I've always planned on working part-time so that I could be home with the girls as much as possible. I'm blessed that my husband is a musician, so he is home all week, which allows me to make my schedule whatever I need it to be. In 2016, I decided to really commit to sugar and not offer wax anymore. There were only a handful of people sugaring in my area, so it wasn't hard to get clients. I've never had to advertise because sugar sells itself! I decided in the last year or so to get rid of all the services I didn't enjoy (at first I offered everything I used to do at the spa). When Covid hit, it actually helped kick me in the butt to get rid of all things face--even sugaring. I decided to hyper-focus my business and be known as a Brazilian expert. So all I offer now is either a Brazilian or Brazilian with underarm. When I made that change, my income literally doubled. I started getting a bunch of new clients and was having a hard time getting my regulars in. So I had to start my waitlist. When I started my business, the most important thing to me was to have a flexible schedule so I could have a lot of family time, but also not to be stressed and running myself ragged like I did at the spa. I decided to give myself an hour with everyone. I know that sounds crazy because it only takes 20-30 min to do the service. But I no longer stress about a client getting lost, stuck in traffic, I have time to talk about retail, I have time to actually connect with them personally, I have time to extract ingrowns and do high frequency. Having an hour also gives me time to thoroughly clean between clients, text clients back, coordinate my students (Ive been an educator with Tamara's Sugar for about 4 years), etc. Having that time buffer ensures my day is low stress and when I get home, I'm home. Because I built in time in my workday to handle admin stuff. It's nice knowing more income is literally just waiting there if I want it. But I make enough in 20 hours a week to have the life I want. And sugar is what made it all possible!