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Hi, welcome to the Glam Life Podcast. My name is Victoria Rocca. You might know me as Victoria Glam if you follow me over on Instagram, which you totally should.
And today I have a very special, I know I always say they're a very special guest, but that's because I keep inviting my friends on my podcast. But today she really is a very special guest because so many people have been helped and touched by this woman, not in a creepy way, in a nice way. She is a multi-award winning PMU artist, a trainer who actually revolutionized the permanent makeup online education game.
She is the founder of the PMU Circle, a business strategist, my former student and current friend, meet Ms. Leila Hinchin. Hi, Leila. Hello, thank you for having me.
You said that perfectly. How are you? How's things? How's the UK? Yeah, good, still cold and wet and windy over here, but we are, yeah, we're good, busy, busy. Nice.
So you are a permanent makeup artist, but you now focus on educating other permanent makeup artists and making that education really accessible. So you've done that through a program called the PMU Circle, but I will let you go ahead and just give a little bit of information for people who have not heard of the PMU Circle yet. What is it and why is it different from other online coaching? Okay, so we developed or we created the PMU Circle four years ago now.
So we've been going quite a while. It's an online platform. It's a monthly membership, but we're very big on the support, the community side of things, as well as the education.
So our members get a brand new class every month through their membership. And I'm very big on collaborating with others. I think it's really, really important in the industry that you do learn from different people because we all work so differently.
And I always used to say to my beginner students, there's not one right way to achieve a finish. You've got to find the way that works for you. So by bringing on different artists every month, I feel like it's good because they can take little bits from each technique and kind of create their own.
Yeah. Yeah, and then we've got the support group. We've got our expert panel in there that are on hand kind of supporting members on a daily basis.
We do live coaching. It's a bit of a nice all-rounder. Oh my God.
First of all, I was on the phone with Alice like two hours ago, maybe. The difference in your accents has never been more obvious to me than today. And I haven't heard your accent since I saw you in London.
I just love it. I really love it. I'm common from East London.
We're common down this side. I'd say Alice is a little bit more of an accent. Alice has, I would say, less of an accent.
She speaks a little more like we do, even though she has an accent, a little more like we do. You're just proper British and I'm live, laugh, loving. When you first came up with this concept for PMU Circle and you thought to yourself, everybody says collaboration, not competition.
Everybody says that they're here to collaborate. And I think that anyone on the street would agree, you can't learn everything from one person. So on paper, this should be perfect.
But did you receive any pushback from saying, yeah, we're gonna make this really low cost so that it's accessible and people can come in and then we'll just have other people come in and teach like micro doses of their curriculum. Did anybody look at you and say like, that's not gonna work or I don't wanna be involved? No, do you know what? We've had such a lovely response from every person that's been on there. I mean, I kind of do try and make it worthwhile for the contributor as well.
So it works both ways. I've actually been dying for you to ask me on the PMU Circle to host a master class and we haven't, you haven't been asked yet. We did have you on Marketing Mastery, Victoria, if you think she forgot.
No, I think it's such an interesting concept and I really like it. And I know so many people say, we're going to collaborate, I'm not involved in competition, but so few people truly do pull other educators who teach the same things that they do or have the same classes and find a way to make that work. It's always gotta be like, well, you don't teach this and I don't teach that, so we pair up.
But when it comes to PMU Circle, everybody teaches all the same stuff, but they come in and teach the thing that they love or the thing that they enjoy doing. And they don't worry like, oh, but you had so-and-so on and she also sells this class. Nobody cares about that.
And I think that's such a niche market that you've been able to carve into that I haven't seen. I really like it. And I think that it's so beneficial for the student.
Well, the thing is, I think when it comes to like competition, collaboration, a student is gonna come to you because one, they like you as a person, they relate to you. And two, they like your style. So although we may both do hair, stroke, eyebrows, we may have completely different styles to our brow still.
So I still think everybody has their unique little spin on things. Yeah, I love that. I love that there's a place for everyone at PMU Circle.
I think that's aspirational. And honestly, it's the best bang for your buck, right? Like there's always going to be someone who can reach me because not every student can learn from every single educator. You have to kind of speak the same language or at least want to learn their style even.
Hearkening back to competition, I will never forget it, though I can never remember the name. You held a reality show competition that I thought was such an amazing concept, just constantly engineering new permanent makeup ideas. Remind me the name of this and how did that competition work? So that was Time to Shine.
Time to Shine. We hosted it through YouTube. We had it all filmed professionally.
Time to Shine, yeah. Okay, and how did that competition work? It was week over week, and it was several contestants competing for a prize and they were tattooing live? Yes, so all came to us in the academy. We had live tattooing.
It was all filmed and streamed live through YouTube so people could tune in and watch. Do you know what I really wanted to do? I just wanted to showcase real day-to-day tattooing, not a perfectly filmed and edited webinar, not finding the perfect skin for your demo. We just had real life, day-to-day models, all different skin types, good, bad, and it was a bit like a little battle.
So every week someone got kicked out of the competition. Your YouTube is popping, actually. Your YouTube does good numbers.
Do you think- I haven't had to actually update my YouTube. It's been a while. It's still doing well, though.
That's what I like about YouTube is that it's evergreen content. People search for things and you'll always pop up. You pop up for me regularly, even though you haven't posted in a while.
Oh, amazing. Yeah. You have 4,400 subscribers, girl.
You're doing great. Do you feel like there's a place for time to shine again? Because I really, I love it. I'm watching Traders right now and I feel like there's so many parallels.
I wanna watch it in real time. I wanna watch British people on a reality show being accessible to me, doing something I care about. I lost the start of you, then it cut out.
Oh, I was saying that I'm watching Traders right now and I was thinking about time to shine and hoping that it would make a season two because I wanna watch British people running around being sneaky or trying to win a prize. I love it. Have you watched Traders? No, I've never seen it.
You haven't seen it? To be honest, I don't watch a lot of TV. What's a day in the life of leisure? So not at work, just a regular day in the life for Laila Hinchin look like? God, I pretty much work every day still. I know I said I'm trying to get this life balance thing done still, but I'm still checking socials every day.
I don't know, we might go out for dinner and bits, but it's rare that I actually sit and watch TV. If we do, then we're sitting and putting a film on, but I don't know what. Yeah, maybe once every couple of weeks, we might put a film on.
Other than that, I'm generally just pottering about doing something. I can't sit still. I literally can't sit still.
Yeah. When I'm answering my DMs and stuff in the evening, that's when I put on a show. And cause you know, it takes a while for people to get back to you anyway.
You're kind of just sitting there waiting for them to respond to you. And I'm telling you, Traders is worth all $5. I have to pay every month to watch that channel.
It's worth it. I'm on season two. Just kicked my girl, Phaedra off.
Spoiler alert, that's all over the internet. Oh my God, it's so good. But they have Traders UK.
And Kate is my list. Yeah, I asked Taryn Darling that same question on my very first podcast with a guest. And do you know, she loves a good serial killer.
Mom. Yeah, the favorite serial killer. I actually have a favorite.
She said, I'm a real Dahmer girl. And also we found out that we both have a love of gardening. So we love to raise houseplants and keep them alive.
And so many other people love houseplants, but they don't keep them alive. So I always want to know like, what little things do we not know about you? What do we not know? Well, you said you don't have a favorite. I'm terrible gardener.
Are you? Terrible gardener. Do you know what? Since I moved home, since I moved my clinic home, because we've got the shop here as well. My mom does the shop for me.
So she comes around four days a week. But she's a great gardener. So she comes around now.
She waters my plants for me and she potters around. And it's the first time I've ever kept a plant alive. Oh, well, mom's keeping it alive.
It's because I'm not responsible for them, you see. It's actually really cute. I love that your mom just pops by to water your garden.
She's symbolic, actually. She's, yeah, this is obviously where I get it from. She can't sit still.
So when she's got nothing to do, she will find something to do. Is your mom as tall as you? Oh, what did you say? Sorry. Is your mom as tall as you? No, my mom's actually quite short, but my dad's tall.
So I got it from him, unfortunately. You guys, when Layla and I met, did we meet in LA or did we meet in the UK? In the UK, at London. The first time we met was last September in the UK.
And I've known Layla for a few years now. But when we saw each other, I was like jaw on the floor. I am five feet, zero inches.
I'm very short. Layla is about nine foot and a half. She's so tall.
I was like, girl. You know what? Every time I meet someone in person, this is the first thing everyone says to me. I didn't realize you were so tall because you only see me on Zoom sitting down.
Right, yeah. I mean, and also your personality is not overbearing or like very take charge. You're very much like kind of let them and then I'll react how I want to react.
Like not a, it's not a weakness. It's actually a strength, but you're like a silent, not silent, what's the word I'm looking for? Just calm. You're just calm all the time.
You know, you don't throw your big dick around, let's say. And then I meet you and I'm like, damn, I didn't know you were like dominant. Okay.
I'd better never tell you what to do again. If I had met you in person, the first time that we met, I think I would have had more trouble giving you directions. I used to love that.
Okay, what you need to do is. No, I couldn't have done it. So you're doing some coaching now, right? I'm doing little bits.
I'm stepping into it gradually. I've just done my, I've done our first, I've done like a teacher's blueprint course. So helping artists set up their beginner training, taking them step by step through everything they need to do.
So that's kind of where I'm at now. Yeah, I stopped my beginners in person to really focus and put more time into the circle, but I just love helping people. So when people ask me for something, I'll create it.
I'll do it. Yeah, just a genuinely kind person. Do you feel like that was kind of the natural progression of some of the people who have been with you since the start of their career through PMU Circle? Or do you feel like this was something different where people said, I've seen what you can do for others.
How about something like this for me? I think it was a bit of both. I probably had like about 60, 70% of the teacher's blueprint students were already Circle members and then a few wasn't. And yeah, I done a live on Instagram at one point before the teacher's blueprint, just talking about getting into teaching for the right reasons, because I feel like a lot of people at the minute are going into it for the wrong reasons maybe.
Oh, I agree, yeah. I saw someone- So I did a live, a little half run. Dude, I saw someone last night on a Facebook group saying, hey, will anybody send me their, I don't know what you would call it, like their basically teaching materials that you would give the students.
So whether you call that a pamphlet or a workbook or whatever, that's what she wanted. She wanted somebody to send her their workbook. So she said, I'm gonna do my first one-on-one, but I've lost the information that my trainer gave me and I want her to have something.
So when she said, I want her to have something to take home with her, I was thinking, wait, are you the student and you've lost the materials your teacher gave you and you're about to take your class? In which case, wouldn't you just ask the teacher for another copy? Or are you telling me that you've taken your first student and you thought you were just going to take your educator's workbook and teach someone from that workbook and you've lost it and you're hoping one of us in the Facebook group will give you our teaching materials? Like, are you? So I asked and she was like, no, it doesn't matter who it's from, just from anybody, just so that the girl has something to take home. So I went and looked at her page and she is selling a one-on-one class to learn Browse one day, $500. And that includes, quote, the gun, which is a pet peeve of mine.
So already we're probably at $400 profit and it's one day, so they're not learning anything. And was somebody else's teaching material? So you did nothing. So when you say, I feel like some people are in it for the wrong reason, I am 100% on board with you.
Yes. Oh my God. It really lags me.
Cause I just feel like people are not taking it seriously enough. Like you are tapping someone's face at the end of the day. Right.
So yeah, I had a little Facebook rant, stroke live on Instagram. And then I just naturally was getting inquiries from people. Will I help them with their academy? And then that was where the teacher blueprint come from.
That's so nice. How long did it take you to throw that together? It took me months. Yeah.
I'm very, yeah, it wasn't, yeah, it took me months. And because I actually wanted to give them learning material to use and edit and make their own as well. So as well as the training, they do have a lot of training material included in that course that they can use.
They don't have to use, they can take ideas from it. It's literally a set up your academy from scratch kind of course. That's so valuable.
And you know, you are someone who has been educating for years. You know the hell out of a beginner's course. You know, from beginning to end, I could rattle off exactly in order how we run my four day course and my 30 day online and my a hundred hour.
I know all of those things. And still it took you months to put it together because it's that thorough and because you take it that seriously. So do I think that you're just gonna hand that over to somebody in a Facebook group who's gonna try and make three or 400 bucks off of it? Of course not.
That's crazy talk. I think that people just don't consider how much time, effort and energy and care is put into some of these projects. Yeah, definitely.
You can't chuck it together. And the thing is, even when this is what I was telling the girls on the course actually, once you start teaching your course, it's gonna keep changing and adapting as you start seeing how your learners are doing. So yeah, it's definitely not something you can chuck together.
What do you think is gonna be the future of education? Do you think more people are gonna move online or do you think we're gonna start to move away from that and get back to in-person trainings? I think online learning has its place in the industry definitely, but I don't think it should ever replace hands-on. For a beginner, I disagree with completely online for beginners. It's lovely for advanced artists, new techniques, but I mean, sometimes I'll speak to circle members and they're really struggling with something and they've watched the classes that we've got on the circle and they can't figure out what they're doing wrong.
That's where you need a hands-on day. Yeah, I agree. I love that they have the option.
It's nice that you guys are in the UK and it's even to drive across the UK is what? Like five hours, six hours? I could get from Lafayette to Houston in four hours. I would move from Louisiana to Texas in four hours. It's a little more difficult.
So we have our own mentorship program, which is small and it's not quite run the way PMU Circle is run. It's not a monthly membership. It's a three-month membership and the doors are closed.
We're full. We take five students and that's it. And it's a couple of dedicated coaches.
So not that many guests, but we have people from, we have two students, three students from UK and two students from the States currently in this round. And sometimes I really want to be like, just come here and put your hands on the pad with me. And it's more difficult.
One of our students is only a few hours away from me and that's who I wanted anyway. Another one is coming from New Jersey in April, but you have to be dedicated. You have to really want to.
So I think when you have someone who's in the program for a while and you guys start to kind of bond and form a friendship, it's easier to make that ask of like, can't just, I need you to get in the car. It's easier to make that ask because they trust you. You've already been learning and they've probably tried it a hundred times but sometimes you cannot replace that hands-on education.
You have to have it. I don't think you'll, no, you'll never replace it. That's a learning type, right? Kinesthetic learners have to put their hands on it.
So I don't think it'll ever go away but I do see a shift of people who think that they're gonna get into this industry really quickly or make money from it really quickly who think, oh, I'll just throw something together online and people will buy it off my website or people who say, I'll just buy a $20 course online and I'll figure it out at home. And I just don't think that's gonna be it. We can do online stuff but that's just never gonna be the only thing that you need.
No, definitely. You know what else you need more even? Yes, your first class. And then if you're having trouble with a concept you do need to come in person, put your hands on with an educator and see depth, hand speed and all that stuff.
But you also need community in person. Like when you and I met and we went to the London conference that was so nice to meet in person all the people that I know for so long. And now I saw that you're part of the Browista competition with Natalie, right? Yes, I am.
How's that going? Oh, what an amazing concept. I love it. So yeah, we've got, we're going this month actually.
We've got the brow brunch this month in Leeds and then I'm going to Birmingham a few weeks later to judge one of the live rounds. So. Oh, what category are you judging? Ombre brows.
Ooh, that's a good one because people do it in so many different styles. Never know what you're gonna see. Some people ombre up here, up here, some people.
Yeah, that's exciting. Yes, I love it. And then we've got, I'm hoping to make the Amsterdam final cause then they're in four days in Amsterdam.
Right. But it falls on my daughter's birthday which is really annoying. So I may even go a day late.
I can't miss her birthday. No, of course not. I may try and get out there for like the last couple of days, hopefully.
That's so exciting. Yeah, I had spoken with Natalie about it and just logistically the dates didn't work out but I really wanted to go to the Browista brunch in Leeds. I really wanted to be there.
I think Katie might be going in my place. Not in my place. I mean, she had her own invite.
I don't mean for it. But I mean like, I won't be there but my friend will be there also representing VIPMU which it's her program anyway. But yeah, I have this immense FOMO.
Like I love Natalie. Yeah, Natalie. I think Alice is going.
You're gonna be there. I'm sure Zoe will show up. Is Jasmine going? I don't know.
But I feel like I wanna see all my friends. Are you gonna come to the next London conference? Oh yeah, I'm coming. I'm coming.
Oh, you know what? I'm not going to Amsterdam cause it's the same time as biotech and I'm receiving an award at biotech. So I'm committed. But those in-person events, like we might live, you live in the UK and I live in the middle of nowhere in the United States but we actually see each other a couple of times a year because like our friend groups because of these conventions and making connections.
And that's so important because that's really where business is done. That's where these collaborations are born. That's where people say, we should throw a class.
I'll host you. Come and do like, do you know Texas? So many opportunities come from these events. I mean, that was actually- Not done in DMs.
Natalie. No, that was how I met Natalie. Now she's done a class for the Circle.
Now I'm doing Browista. It just leads to opportunities. That's what the opportunities are.
Yeah, definitely. And also it's really nice to have somebody who understands your business. So when you're extra stressed or bummed out about something and your spouse or your best friend don't get it cause they don't do this.
It's nice that I can have an hour long chat with Alice this morning and be like, bitch, let me tell you something. That is really nice. I think that's another, yes, it's collaborations, not competitors but it's a different vein of it because there's no one making any money off of it.
It's not a sales thing. It's literally just a supportive thing. And during lockdown is when I met Natalie.
So we had done an Instagram live together. And after that, I was just like, I really like your vibe. And I would just message her every once in a while.
She's such a high vibrating kind of person. You know, oh, hi babe, how are you? Yeah, she can always make you smile. Soon as you talk to her, you're smiling.
Yeah, so she's perfect actually to host the intro. So the way that Browistas work is they're basically like sub parties before you get to the actual Amsterdam festival, right? Yes, so I think like worldwide, they're doing these little, the contests all over and then the finalists will end up going through to the Amsterdam one. So it's almost like a bracket at this point.
So like these little competitions lead to these competitions lead to this big competition. Yes. That's pretty cool.
I like how they've kind of extended it. So it's year round almost at this point, there's always an event that you could be going to. That's important because those events take a lot of effort, a lot of planning.
That's why UK is every 18 months, not every 12 months. Yeah, yeah. Alice helped me throw a conference and I was gonna do another one this year, I just don't have it in me.
Like not this year, I can't do it. No, I remember talking to Alice when she took over the UK one and she was just like pulling her hair out at one point. You're draining, it's so many logistics and coordinating everybody's schedules and then making sure, yeah, balancing this with that, it's so much.
Yes. So props to Natalie for that. I'm glad that you're involved.
I'm super jealous that I'm not headed there and you're gonna see all of our friends and I'm not, of course you could see our friends anytime you want. Oh my God. And then you had also started your PMU podcast.
The last time we saw each other, you were just getting started with PMU Unveiled and I listened to the first three episodes. I think it's really nice. I love the one with Tracy Giles.
Do we have more episodes coming out? Is there a season two? There is a season two and I'm working on it now. I need to get you on it, Victoria. Oh yeah, I'm down.
Yes, working on it now. This is me, I'm 100 miles an hour. I have all these ideas, I do it all at once.
And then we redone the PMU Circles platform, got a new app and we've been super busy with that. Oh, I saw the app. I saw, well, I didn't see the app, but I saw you talking about the app and I thought that's such an interesting concept because you know what? We do all of our stuff.
All our videos are on Kajabi and Kajabi allows you to have an app, but it's very expensive and it's very clunky. It doesn't work. So I know that you're probably executing it better than I am.
So I, cause my only forte into that was the Kajabi app that sucks. But I thought that was really energizing and exciting because they can really like be sitting on the train and just watch whatever video they want to for 30 minutes. That's so nice to take it on the go.
And you can download for offline use as well. So like if you're on a plane or something, you can download it onto your app and then you can watch it when you've got no wifi. So they have no excuse anymore not to watch the classes.
Nice, and there's, is there a community on the app as well? Yes, I've got community on the app as well. Notifications, you can inbox each other. So yeah, we were super busy building all this out and getting that perfect.
I completely forgot about the podcast. So I'm now back working on season two. I forgot about it, I just was like, oh shit.
Oh yeah, that's funny. No, I thought that was just season one and we're gonna have season two. I didn't think you forgot about it.
Okay, so you've PMU circled it up. You revamped that and now you've got an app as well. You've got PMU unveiled, got your YouTube account that's always repping for you.
And you have a free Facebook group also where you can take you to give advice and even if they're not in the circle, you have the PMU circle free version. And you're gonna be at Browista meeting people and adding value and giving value. I'm still hopeful that we'll get time to shine season two.
Might be living on a prayer there. You're going to Amsterdam, you're gonna be at London again in next spring or whatever it is. Yeah, I'm at PMU festival in August.
I've got Manchester Aesthetics Awards in June. No, that's April as well. What PMU festival in August? We've got a busy year planned.
Oh, so Jessica Abbott does a PMU festival. Oh, okay. It's literally like a festival but it's a conference at the same time.
What do you mean it's a festival? They have rides and games? So it's in like a big marquee in a big field. It's actually a house. She's got so much land.
So a big field and yeah, it's a really good fun. It's gonna be a really good fun day. We've got some demo in there.
We've got little awards and then party basically. It's gonna be a party. That's so fun.
I'm doing PMU world in August. And I think I was thinking that you were coming to that. So I was really, I was gonna say, oh my God, we'll see each other anyway.
It's in my plans to start venturing outside of the UK. So end of this, there's one in Australia, isn't there at the end of this year where you're looking at potentially going to. And then I really wanna do come to America next year.
Come to see some of your conferences over there. Yeah, that would be so fun. So there's just a million places that people can reach you and people can see you.
What would you say is the easiest, fastest way?
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