Position: Owner/Artist
Company: Emily Hudspeth, ?Hair Design & Makeup Artist
What they do: Special-occasion ?hair and makeup design
Revenue: $100-$175 hour for ?location bookings
Next Goals: Continue to grow her business and elevate her niche within the industry.
Emily Hudspeth looks the part of a hair and makeup specialist when she walks into the room. A chic scarf is draped from her shoulders, and her raven, wavy hair frames her face. She’s glowing with energy, and she doesn’t seem to carry the burden of a stressed-out entrepreneur. Maybe that has something to do with her impeccable skill with a makeup brush, or maybe it’s just that she’s hit on something truly divine—a business model that makes the most of her skills and fills a void in the market.
After four years of training and working for some of the best hair and makeup professionals in Santa Monica, Calif., Hudspeth is back in Baton Rouge. She hit up the West Coast to train, but a change in her salon’s management pushed her to realize it was time to go. “It’s a really interesting feeling to know when it’s time to leave,” Hudspeth says. “Not to be cheesy, but it was the end of an era.”
Though originally from Jena, she attended LSU and worked at salons in the Capital Region. But coming back to Baton Rouge meant starting from scratch—a new job, new clientele and new challenges.
But when Hudspeth started looking for a salon to build her business, she didn’t find anything that felt right. “It’s hard to find someone to work with that you fully, 100% get behind their idea,” she says. “It takes a lot to open a business. It’s like raising a baby. And when you work for someone, you’re either carrying the baby or you’re dropping the baby.”
It’s a reality of the hair and makeup design industry that moving—especially out of state—means losing the fruits of your labor since your clients don’t move with you. But for Hudspeth, it also meant a great deal of opportunity. “I needed to make some progress financially,” she says. “And I saw a place in the market that was not being filled and said, ‘Hey, I’ll do that.’”
Things just sort of fell into place for Hudspeth from there—with a great deal of hard work, of course. She began marketing herself as an on-location hair and makeup artist. And not only is her specialization unique, it’s relatively recession-proof. Hudspeth steps in for those “life-changing, life-altering special events that you’re supposed to be so beautiful for.”
“You lose so much of it if you have to rush around,” she says. So while she knows she might never become that client’s primary hairdresser, she can be the person they call for balls, weddings and other special events.
“It may not be as glamorous as doing makeup for a movie, but it keeps me a lot busier and it’s more fun to me.”
