Work Smart, Not Hard: 10 Tips for Making the Most of Your Time This Festive Period
Let’s face it, this time of year we see a BIG increase in appointment slots being booked - we often have more clients than we have time! Just to help you out a little bit, we’ve gathered some of our top tips for maximising your time, so that you can fit in all the clients you need to (or at least so that you’ve got extra time for a little bit of TLC for yourself!)
Easy Fanning Lashes
Easy Fanning lashes have taken the lash industry by storm - they are pretty standard volume lashes, looked at fibre by fibre, but what sets these bad boys apart is that each strip has 2-3 layers of lashes on them. This means that when you grip them with your tweezers, they spring open for you, so you don’t have to spend lots of time making your fans!
This all makes for a faster set, and because they have different length lashes on each layer, you end up with a gorgeous wispy set, which is what the vast majority of our clients are looking for!
Premade Fans
Like easy fanning lashes, these speed up your treatment by virtue of simply taking a lot of the work out for you!
Premade fans don’t necessarily have the best reputation owing to their history, but do premade fans cause damage? No, not these days. They’re the same weight as a hand-made fan in the same size (they’re also hand made themselves, just by someone else) and they’re bonded with such a teeny tiny amount of glue just to keep them in place that a 3D premade fan won’t add any more weight, damage or danger than a 3D fan you make yourself.
Like any other extension or fan, eyelash extension safety comes down to application. The quality of premade fans in recent years has significantly improved, meaning that in addition to being completely safe, they also - generally speaking - look almost indistinguishable from a fan you’d make yourself!
By using premade fans you’re cutting down on time spent making fans yourself - whether you cover every lash with a premade fan, or you do a mixture of the two, you’ll undoubtedly see a difference in the time that your set takes!
Tape Back Layers
This is a hack you need in your arsenal any time of the year, but if you don’t already do this, now’s a great time to start!
There are two ways to do this, whether you’re doing it for a full set or an infill.
The first way is to take a length of tape and just gently lift the eyelashes, sticking the tape down at the ends and along the top. We don’t ever want to stick the tape down too hard over the lashes themselves - this is where it causes discomfort or even pain for our clients when we remove it.
Once you’ve taped the lashes back, take your tweezers and pull down the first layer of lashes. When those lashes are covered, you can tape that layer down to the eyepatch, again careful to only stick down the very ends of the tape. Carry on until you’ve covered all lashes and then carefully remove each piece of tape.
Alternatively, you can lash all the lashes you can see, and then lift those, revealing the bare lashes that are hiding between them!
Have Your Clients Clean Their Own Lashes
Of course we ask our clients to arrive without makeup, and the majority of them do; and while it’s true that we’ll need to carry out our pretreatment routine if we don’t want to have to make time for courtesy (apology) appointments, it’s well worth getting our clients to do the first part for us if we can!
Foam cleanser can be used by anyone, so we don’t have to worry about our clients hurting themselves because they’re not trained to use the product properly - simply give them the bottle and point them in the direction of the bathroom. While we can get a nice deep clean with our cleansing brush, they know how hard they can press while still cleansing thoroughly. It just gives us a little bit of extra time to stretch, have a little snack or some water, or just tidy our trolley.
Cover the Bottom Layer 100%
While we’re working with layers, it’s worth thinking about coverage, and how we can use it to our advantage. The bottom layer of lashes is the first that our clients see, so covering it 100% means that to them, the set will automatically look fuller. If you don’t have time to cover every single little lash, cover the bottom layer 100%, the middle layer 80% and the top layer 60% - you’ll save time in missing those lashes, but the overall look won’t suffer so long as there aren’t gaps!
Properly Organise Your Lash Trolley
I can’t stress this one enough - organising your lash supplies is paramount to the smooth running of your appointments. Don’t sacrifice any time trying to find things that, if you just spent 10 minutes organising your trolley, you’d have no trouble finding immediately.
To help you organise your trolley, opt for trolley organisers which are designed especially for lash supplies or, if you’re on a slightly tighter budget, have a look at sites like Pinterest for storage and organisation tips and ideas. Being able to lay your hands on exactly the things you need exactly when you need them will make such a huge difference, and will save so much time!
Ensure You Are Fully Stocked
Nothing takes up more time than having to wait for new supplies to be delivered because you forgot to order them, or thought you had more than you did. Make sure you set aside time each month to order your supplies for the following month, and keep track of your inventory! Overstocking is just as dangerous as understocking!
DON’T cut corners with pretreatment!
I know we’ve talked a fair bit about how you can save time during your treatment by using faster alternatives, or by (kind of) skipping steps, but one place you NEVER want to cut corners is on your pretreatment! As an educated guess, I’d say incomplete or missed pretreatment accounts for 75% of instances of poor retention.
The fact of the matter is that if there’s any makeup, dust, dirt, oils, etc. on the lashes when we apply extensions the lashes will come off as soon as they’re washed as the makeup, oils, etc. will all be broken down by the hot shower steam or the soap. This is not something we want at any time during our career but least of all during one of thebusiest periods!
For more of an idea about what constitutes great pretreatment, I’d suggest checking out this blog post, which looks at how you can give the best pretreatment, whatever your budget.
Have Two Sets of Tweezers to Reduce Cleaning Time
This doesn’t really warrant a paragraph as the heading says it all, but having more than one pair of tweezers is actually very beneficial! Not only can you leave one set in barbicide while you work, then switch them over for the next client, but you’re also covering yourself in the event that you drop a pair - dropping tweezers is never ever a fun time, but having a back up pair is always a good idea!
So what about the barbicide? Well, it doesn't have to be barbicide specifically, you could well use inLei’s F Plus sanitising liquid - what you will want to do though is soak your tweezers in this for about 20 minutes after use on each client - this isn’t time we can really afford if we only have the one set of tweezers. Having two means that you can maintain your high levels of hygiene, while not sacrificing your time.
I will note here that it’s really important that after you’ve let your tweezers soak and they’re clean, they are removed from the F Plus solution so that they won’t become tarnished over time, and that when you’re completely done for the day, your tweezers are completely dry before you put them away in their case or organiser, again to prevent rust and tarnishing.
Use Lash Palettes for your Regular Clients to Reduce Setup Time
The great thing about palettes (well, one of the great things, at least) is that you can put whatever lashes on them that you need at any given time and they’ll just sit there waiting for you the next time you need them.
You can arrange the lashes by length, by curl, but thickness, fibre, lash set - I’d recommend arranging some by clients if you have regulars - this way, they can come right in, lie down and you can just go right ahead on their infill without too much thought - just grab their palette and get to it!
Even if you’re not using palettes per clients, they can be used to your advantage - let’s say you have one palette for classic lashes, one palette for hybrid lashes and one palette for Russian Volume - even a first time client ends up with time saved where you can just grab the best palette for their needs and not have to worry about finding the lash tray, getting the right lengths out, all all the rest - you might need one or two added extras, but overall you’re saving a pretty big chunk of time!
So, what will you do with all that saved time? More sets, Christmas shopping, or taking time out for you?
If you’re not super full just yet, don’t worry! We have a post coming later this week which is sure to help you get that calendar fully booked in no time!
