On this bonus episode of The Walk Of Life podcast, Cheryl Thibault is joined by Linda Nordstrom from Famous Names Products to discuss her chapter in the book ‘Career In The Beauty Industry: Discover If It’s For You’ as well as her life and career in the industry.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most people that know me know I have a huge passion for the professional beauty industry. I grew up in a tiny town in Rhode Island but my dream was always to go to school to be a hairdresser, but it wasn’t until my early 20s that I put myself through hairdressing school and I was absolutely elated and got pulled into it. Within 18 months I switched from doing hair to nails which started off an amazing career where I have a couple of salons, but I really found my passion in teaching, especially when you have a great product and the heart to be able to educate other nail techs. Now we have our own company where we formulate all our own products from my husband Jim’s brain to my hands. Both our two daughters are now actively involved in the company too.
- IBX was a product that came deep from our hearts, Jim came up with the idea of a strengthening device that strengthens the nail from the inside out. We went to a team of chemists who said we couldn’t do it, but it happened. While it’s applied to the surface of the nails, once we’re done there’s nothing left on top, everything’s on the inside – we’re building, strengthening and toughening the nail while at the same protecting it against whatever we wear over the top, you can wear whatever you want. It’s by far the most amazing innovation in my lifetime since doing nails.
- I offer two online courses a month, one is for relief pedicures and of course one is on IBX, they’re both certification classes and both very intense at two and a half hours. When Covid hit, we were wondering what we were going to do, so we started teaching even more during the 7-8 months of Covid, I think I educated over 6,000 nail techs. But we stopped charging for our classes because our techs were sitting at home not making any money and since then our classes have been more booked than they’ve ever been, we’ve still not gone back to charging from either of them but we have confidence in our products and education that everybody’s going to buy something. It’s a way to give back to this industry that’s given us so much over the years.
- When you look and break down what the foot contains; all the bones and the joints and the ligaments and you think about that, doing a pedicure is important. And know what to do and how to do it and how to keep your clients’ feet safe and how to train them. That’s why we teach about the anatomy of the foot as well as a whole section on disorders.
BEST MOMENTS
‘When I teach my students I ask “what makes us great nail tech?” We all know that any nail that comes in to us, whatever it looks like, we can put something over the top of it and make it look fabulous. But, why not start helping the actual nail that’s there. That’s what sets us apart from the other nail techs on the street that are just putting something pretty over the top.’
Jim's Dad had him formulate his first product: a cuticle oil – SolarOil was his very first product. We knew when we started Famous Names and working on IBX, we wanted to come out with a new, more innovative, all-natural, certified organic oil. Jim always has a codename when working on a new product, when she was young our oldest daughter called SolarOil Daddy’s Oil, so the codename for this was Project Daddy which 18 months later we changed the spelling to DadiOil.’
‘We pride ourselves that relief is nothing like a medical pedicure, we decided to go in a whole different direction for a lot of different reasons, which is why we call it a cosmetic.’
‘Even knowing how to file and cut a toenail could be a life and death matter.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
After starting her career as a successful Salon Owner, Linda Nordstrom became an Educator and Advocate for Nail Technicians and Artists worldwide. With over thirty years of experience, she now leads the global educational and customer support strategy for Famous Names, and still finds the time to be a tireless and supportive daily resource for an ever growing network of enthusiastic Nail Professionals. Linda truly loves to spend her time “in the trenches” with her fellow Nail Technicians.
Website: https://famousnamesproducts.com/
VALUABLE RESOURCES
Be a guest! - https://misscheryl.com/podcast/podcast-guest-form/
FREE E-BOOK - http://promos.misscheryl.com/ <
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