Elena Asher & LashMakers: Helping Women Develop a Million Dollar Business
Victor Hugo, the famed French author, once wrote that for a man to understand a woman he “must listen to what she says with her eyes.” There are, after all, few features that are more important for drawing others in and revealing the true self. The importance of the eyes is even more certain today, in an age of social media, than it was 150 years ago. Everyone needs to be able to express themselves through these windows to the soul. Elena Asher’s LashMakers makes sure that its hundreds of thousands of customers around the globe are able to do just that.
Asher’s Miami-based business serves 57 countries and trains over 400 lash artists each year, with a focus on getting clients exactly what they need to enhance the natural beauty of their eyes. Each face is different, and LashMakers assures that each individual receives the right type of eyelashes and the right care to fit their unique needs. To this end, LashMakers 118 different products make it possible for lash artists to help any and every client.
More importantly, Asher is empowering women in the process, promoting financial independence though eyelash artistry. Asher believes that every artist is capable of building a million dollar business, as she herself has proven. She hails from a modest background herself, coming to America as a 21-year-old with little money and less English, so she is as familiar with the type of grit and determination success demands as she is with the best way to make someone’s eyes pop. She believes it is essential that LashMakers’ students are trained not only in the creative skills that go into enhancing the eyes, but also the ins and outs of running a successful business. She believes that both “educating about eyelash artistry and the financial side of the beauty industry” are an absolute must for success in the field.
The eyelash industry makes a whopping 1.4 billion dollars annually, but it is only the business savvy who will succeed. Asher tries to inspire her students not only to become great artists but to increase their incomes and gain financial freedom. Her inspiring advice to them is straightforward: “Go into business with discipline and love. Discipline will keep you learning and growing, but love will make you work with purpose.”