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Welcome to the Glam Life Podcast, where we empower and inspire beauty professionals to take their careers to the next level. Your host, Victoria, is a certified business coach with over a decade of experience in the beauty industry, helping countless beauty professionals start and grow successful businesses. Now she's sharing her knowledge and expertise with you.
Whether you're just starting out in the beauty industry or looking to take your business to new heights, this podcast is for you, covering topics like community, management, branding, and much more. So join us on this journey to build the beauty business of your dreams. Hey, what's up? My name is Victoria Rocca.
You might know me as Victoria Glam if you follow me over on Instagram, which you totally should. You can actually follow this podcast on Instagram at the Glam Life Podcast, and you can watch full episodes anytime you want on my YouTube. Today, I have a super cool guest with me, someone who's actually just about three or four hours away from me, but we chose to meet on Zoom so that she can relax in her beautiful pink lake house.
You guys, meet my friend, Shara, as in Shara Coke, which is how she told me to pronounce her name. Shara Juarez from Inquity Houston. Hi.
Thank you for having me. Of course. Oh my God.
How cute is your little pink dog? Okay. Who is this? What's his name? Shania Twain. She goes by Shania.
Shania. Hi. Oh my God.
I love this. I bet that you're speaking to me and not her at this moment, but look it over it. I am kind of speaking to her.
Shania. Hi. No, actually, before I even knew you, your reputation, and so does Shania's, precedes you beyond.
Before I ever met you, the first thing someone said to me about you was that you tattoo in your living room with your dogs, or that you teach people to tattoo in your living room with your dogs. I was going to say, I don't tattoo in my living room with my dogs, but I teach. Yeah.
My training center is a five bedroom lake house. We all stay here together for four straight days, and it really is. It's almost like a retreat slash training.
It's very relaxing. The dogs are no longer here though for that. They were here a very brief time because my husband, who is a firefighter, broke his knee and keep them.
But now he can. He's all better. So the dogs leave for the trainings.
But there was a time when we had pink dogs running around while we were learning nipple theory. You have significantly reduced my interest in- I'm kidding. I have a dog to work.
I have a warehouse attached to my building. I have three separate parts to this one huge building. I have an actual classroom where students come and learn and tattoo.
I have the main part of the building where I tattoo and the girls who work here tattoo. And then I have a warehouse and my dogs will kick it with me in the warehouse all the time. But once you and I met, I did ask you about that almost immediately.
And when you explained to me that this was a lake house and it was retreat style, I wanted to take a new areola class and still do want to take a new areola class. I want to come. You need to come.
How did you get involved with areola tattoo? Oh girl, that's been 22 years ago that I got involved with areola tattooing. I honestly had been- I owned a dance studio, was my first profession and I taught dance. And I- That tracks.
That tracks. You look like a, you know, oh we're practicing for a dance review right now. You totally look like it.
Thank you. But, so yeah, I also taught ballroom dancing and tumbling. And I was about six to seven months pregnant and I got kicked pretty good spotting for tumbling.
Gave me a pretty good scare. And so went ahead, had the baby, closed the studio, and then I was just staying home mom. And I just really, as much as I love being a mom, I have six kids, so I mean I love kids, but I wasn't really fulfilled.
Like I wanted to be able to do something outside of the home. And I actually stumbled into tattooing because I wanted to have my eyeliner tattooed. And so I started researching who to go to, who to trust in the state of Oklahoma.
And through that research, I saw that they were starting their first state accredited paramedical or certified medical micropigmentology course. And here I am almost 22 years later. That's so cool.
Was there, you teach a lot of paramedical though, because you have Inkey scar revision, you have scar camouflage, and you have areola. Am I missing one? 3D belly buttons as well. 3D belly buttons.
That's right. So you, you really leaned hard into paramedical. Was there a reason you decided more on the paramedical side than necessarily like intro to brows, lip blush? Absolutely.
Because I did start out in the beginning also doing PMU. I used to train PMU. I feel like PM or the paramedical side of it kind of saves me in the longevity of my career because as much as I love PMU, it is very, very stressful dealing with people's faces and those $5 tickets, people you make a lot of money with this is my face.
And now we have social media and it was a lot of stress. It was a lot of pressure. And I feel like we as artists already are perfectionist as it is, and we're so hard on ourselves.
So when I started becoming busier with paramedical, it's a whole new feel. People are so appreciative. They've been through something really traumatic and you're there to help it get a better, even if it's 30, 40, 50% better, they don't care.
They're just so appreciative and desperate for someone to help them. And it's just a completely different feeling. And I knew right away, and I can remember praying, God, please let there be a day when my business becomes all areolas and scars.
And when that day came, I was terrified. I'm like, no, God, I'm just joking. I don't know if I'm faithful, if I trust you enough to take that leap.
But I did. And it's just been an incredible blessing all along. That's so nice.
I've heard from a few people on the podcast who dabble in paramedical. And then of course, I had Jodi Stosky on who that's her bread and butter is paramedical. But I think it's always interesting to see the path people took to get to their specialization.
So I love that you started off in PMU and it wasn't by necessity, it was simply by choice. This is something that you connected with and that you connected with these clients more so than just people who are being, you don't want to call them vain, but this isn't vanity, right? This is something so much deeper. It definitely is cosmetic.
It's an elective procedure. And so yeah, matter of fact, I was, I had also prayed that I would be on the news. Like I tried and tried to find a news anchor that would let me tattoo them so I could be on the news.
And then I did. And so my eyebrows took off even more and I was like, no, I don't, what am I doing? I really want your boobs. Like, God, I misprayed that prayer.
But so yeah. A misfire. Casual misfire to the big guy.
That's so funny. I have been tattooing for eight years now. I always say almost a decade because that's what it feels like to me.
But I guess technically it's eight years now and you know, I have the microblading institute. I teach and I train, but we really stick to brows. And then of course I teach a hundred hours as well, brows, liner, lips, but we haven't gotten into teaching paramedical yet.
I am trained in areola, but I saw that you have a train the trainers course for areola. How is that going? It's going really, really good. It is very non-traditional type of course.
So typically trainers, you find a trainer because someone has, you know, many, many years experience. They've done X amount of procedures. Their work is beautiful and that's who you want to train with.
What I am hearing my students say over and over and over again is that they took a training because they found all those perfect variables in their trainer. But when they got there, the trainer was not really able to teach it. Like being able to do and being able to teach were different things.
And so I'm ready for PMU coaching without the $10,000 price tag. Enter VIPMU, your group coaching solution. Check it out here.
I have my train the trainers program to where my trainers are an extension of me. They're not instead of me or in lieu of me, they're an extension of me. And so what, what they do is they send me back videos of them actually teaching select lesson plans so that I can hear, they know how to teach it.
They know how to break it down into a way that's understandable and it's fun. And then if there's, you know, the, the things that do require experience, I'm there to help with those things. You know, like one of the most common things that happens in our industry is they're allergic to the tachyderm that we put on them.
And so that can be a little bit scary for a new artist and for a new patient and that type thing. So I'm right, I'm right here with them in case there are things that need to be addressed experience wise. Maybe they have a student that really is struggling with, you know, trying to get that texture just perfect.
So we, we really go at this as a team and I love it. That's so smart. I like that.
You kind of keep your, your thumb on the pulse of things. And then also to have mama available if the kids get nervous, that is always so important. I also think it's, you know, it's nice to go out and find a trainer who does beautiful work and is trustworthy and has been doing it for many years.
And so you make the conscious decision to hand over thousands of dollars and take a class. However, I think there's a big barrier to get there because it's so difficult to actually show your work in, in areola specifically. Where are you supposed to find? First of all, the algorithm is working against us, right? You can't see anybody you follow anyway.
And secondly, there's such a bias against showing areola. Have you had a lot of fight with this? Oh yes. Very long fight.
Um, you know, I even had my plate, my page blocked for 90 days because, because of it. And then, you know, the only thing I got from Instagram was, um, we apologize. We mistakenly banned your page for 90 days.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have, you know, presented. And then my page is suddenly back. All my boobs are still there.
Everything's still there. All my boobs. Do you find that students run into this? Over the nipple, doing a swipe feature, something like that really does help.
Do you find that your students are up against this? Is this a continuing problem that you're still hearing about? Yeah. Probably help students daily how to, to, you know, do a swipe feature because a lot of times they don't know. And so, um, that's why I'm excited to meet you is to have some affordable coaching available because who's going to go take out a second mortgage on their home and spend $2,000, $10,000 or $15,000 so they can learn to post a real or do a swipe feature.
I mean, it's just not realistic. So we've been helping students almost daily figure out how to, you know, how to put a sticker, which is easy, but how to do a swipe feature and that type thing. Shara, look me in my eyes.
I'm looking at you, woman. I am actively fighting to make coaching accessible to as many people as possible without mortgaging their fucking house. I am actively fighting for it.
Just know there are other people actively fighting against it. Just know that. Oh, I am well aware of that, but I really do want to come to the Lake house.
So I have trained areola with a couple of different classes, right? I took your class on Shay's Academy online. I've trained with Callie Morehouse, who is absolutely amazing. She's a goat.
And then I met you in person and I watched you do, you know, doodle on some real skins, but I want to come and spend some time at the Lake house and really do it up. And Carla Ricciardone is a very good girlfriend of mine. We have each other on speed dial.
She has seen me naked a bunch of times and I have as well. We actually have also shared a bunk bed and it broke and it's a whole fiasco. Only a broke bitch would make us sleep in a bunk bed together, but we did it.
She saved my life actually from being a pancake. But so she has tattooed my areola. Some people might not know this.
You don't just tattoo your areola if you've had cancer. There are actually a lot of reasons that people get their areola tattooed. Maybe you had a breast reduction, a breast lift.
You know, there's a myriad of issues that could go down that would lead you to getting losing color or pigment. There are losing the entire areola. I had a mommy makeover three years ago, two years ago, something like that.
And in that I had a breast lift and my areola tissue actually experienced an infection. So I had necrosis in just the bottom of one of my areola, which was real gross to look at. But it didn't last too long.
My doctor's great. He caught the infection, tested it, gave me the right antibiotics. And we stopped it.
But there was just this small portion at the very bottom. So if you're looking at a clock, like from five to seven o'clock, I was missing color. I still had the regular texture and everything, just missing color.
And Carla and I flew to Miami. I slept at her house. We had a couple margaritas.
And the next day she tattooed it on for me. And then we had some spicy margaritas. And then I went home.
I think I was gone like 18 hours. So I've learned how to do it. I've done it a couple of times.
And then I had it done. So I've experienced it. Scar tissue doesn't hurt nearly as much as the rest of it.
And we decided to just give me an overhaul. I wanted all my color to be just a little richer, you know? That was an experience. Tattooing an areola that nothing was wrong with, you know? Spicy.
Yeah, to the test, for sure. Nipple blushing. You have to really want it.
You have to really want it. But I have to tell you, where I didn't have color, where I had scar tissue, I didn't feel anything, actually. And Carla's not a big lover of numbing.
You know, I'm a huge lover of numbing. Carla is not a big lover of numbing. So that left areola, that was completely fine.
I raw dotted it. That was your rite of passage. I feel like I got jumped into a gang.
You were initiated. By Carla Ritchie Ardone, I was initiated into the boob gang. I own the brow gang, now I'm initiated into the boob gang.
Everyone needs to be in a nipple gang, you know? So you currently are teaching at the Lake House. You are still providing services, right? Correct. I still, I have been tattooing still five days a week.
Up until the last couple months, I've now tattooed two to three days a week. And then I train here at the Lake House. And then I actually offer live models at the surgical center in Houston.
So we'll do a one-day clinical. That's kind of an add-on day to the Lake House, if the students want it or feel like they need it. Oh, that's so nice.
Do you work with a lot of doctors in their office? I do. I work with 28 plastic surgeons and eight major hospitals. So we're making boobies.
I had Robin Hayes on the podcast too, and she does some paramedical as well. Yes, yes. And she goes from doctor's office to doctor's office to doctor's office.
That lady is busy. That's the way to do it. That is the way to do it.
It seems like that's kind of the general path for paramedical, is you need great relationships with physicians or with surgeons, and you need access to their office. Because them referring out, I mean, they might do it, but is there a reason that it's just easier to go to their office and do it? How long do you ask someone to be healed from surgery before you go to a doctor's office and tattoo? So typically, their doctors will have them wait six months after their breast reconstruction. Then there's always the variable, like, did they get an infection? Or there's always variables that play into that.
But definitely, that's one thing that my class is heavy on, is how to get in with those doctors, how to interview, what they're wanting to hear, what they don't want to hear. Because a lot of these doctors don't like to refer out. Maybe they're buying insurance and they don't want to lose, you know, that income from it.
Sometimes these doctors don't like to refer out because they don't know where they're referring to. Like, it's this lady tattooing in her living room with dogs running around the house. It's so shady.
Yeah, who would do that? Or maybe they're tattooing, which would be my case, maybe they're referring out to their competitor's office. I have that done all the time, though. They don't have an artist coming in.
They'll be like, oh, we've heard of this lady, we'll just refer you out to her. Well, I'm taking them to one of my major plastic surgeon's offices. And so that can instantly become, you know, a conflict of interest.
Um, that makes sense. Pardon me? That makes sense. Oh, yeah, I can see that.
Yeah. And then last but not least, they risk losing their Botox and fillers because most all these doctors have like an in-house spa of some sort. And so if they're referring them out to you, the patients usually find, oh my gosh, I was able to pull up to this cute little pink office somewhere.
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BrowSister.com. Use code GLAMLIFE for 20% off your next order. I could park in the front, walk in. There was no parking garage.
There was no parking fees or elevators. And so the patients really do find that they're comfortable in their doctor's office. That's where they want to be.
They trust their doctor. And so they like that. They like to kind of keep it in-house.
That makes sense. Because I think that's a pretty good money maker for physicians. Like, yeah, I'm sure their bread and butter is their actual medical facilities.
But that excess of like, oh, that's where I go. I go to my plastics office for Botox and filler. Are you an injector? No, I am not.
Oh, my first class ever was in Houston. It was a 100-hour class that I took in four days. But I love her.
And I could call her today and she will answer questions. I think she, and she had been an injector and a permanent cosmetic artist for a very long time. She was AAM approved.
I think that she gave me a lot of the work up front. Like, she had this huge manual. I've never seen anybody's manual this big.
She had this huge manual and you had to kind of qualify before you came to the class. And then she did speed through a lot of it. But I think that she was also kind of working out how to change her curriculum from what it had been, slower paced all these years.
So now everybody's whipping out two-day classes and she's got to stay competitive. But she still wants to give you all this info, you know? So it was a whole experience, but it was in Houston. My friend, Lisa Fast, she's absolutely amazing.
I love her, but she's an injector too. So I even took an advanced class with her two or three years later. I went back to her in Houston and I made her do my injectables while I was there.
I had her do my brows, my Botox and my lips while I was in Houston. Smart. I'm sorry? I said, that's so smart.
Right? And I just had my first, while I was in Houston, I took a pregnancy test because I thought I was pregnant for my first class. And it said I was not pregnant. So she tattooed my brows.
And when I got home, it said that I was pregnant. I just took it too soon. She actually called me and called me out on that, Lisa.
She was like, so you were lying to me. You had me tattoo your brows and you were pregnant. And I was like, I was not lying.
I peed on the stick at Target, in the parking lot, on my lunch break. It said I was not pregnant. So I didn't know I was pregnant.
So then after I had that baby and he was 18 months old, something like that, that's when I went back. And my cousin lives in Houston. So I had her babysit him while I went to Lisa's.
We did a continuing ed class and I had her jab, jab, jab me up all over. It was like a mommy, a mini mommy makeover. Oh, good.
If you were an injector, that's exactly what I would be asking for. I would, I'm coming to the Lake house. I'm training areola with you.
And I want you to jab me up. Fill you up, I'll YouTube it real quick. No, I'm kidding.
Perfect. That's all I need. You know, just watch out for arteries.
Oh yeah. Those, those minor details. We're joking, but there are so many people who think that this is a fast cash grab industry.
And they say things like that all the time. And then they, they're bold. They will argue with people on Facebook forums talking about mind your business.
Don't worry about it. It's not your business. I wouldn't worry about it.
You don't know what I do. Will you just ask the question? Where can I buy Botox wholesale? So I'm going to assume you're not a practitioner. Exactly.
They just add anything on. It is scary. One of my doctors that I work for, that is kind of his pet peeve, I guess, because he has seen cars going down the road and there'll be advertising Botox on the back of their car and Botox fillers, massage, a little bit of everything, you know, massage, like set them up and he'll bust them.
He loves doing that. So have you ever seen, um, like, you know, in the body art world, there are people who are considered scratchers. Like they taught themselves with a YouTube class or whatever.
And then that work walks in your door and you're like, who did your tattoo? Do you see that with, um, areola? Oh, okay. So in the paramedical world, what has been going on forever and ever and ever is these doctor's offices have a member of staff, typically a nurse or someone who's on salary. The doctor will be like, okay, the first Tuesday of every month I'm in surgery.
You're going to tattoo for us. Yeah. And little wheelie cart in their closet somewhere that has their, used to be a per mark machine and their, um, nouveau contour pigments.
They come pulling out and they would tattoo not having any formal education whatsoever. It was just a free tattoo artist on salary. So, um, we are still seeing to this day, so many poorly executed tattoos coming in and they're orange because they don't understand color theory.
And then you get up into your higher Fitzpatrick, those four women of color coming in with grayish blue nipples and thank the Lord. Those days are soonly coming to an end. Yeah.
Well, thank God for that. Right? Like the more that we organize and the more that we communicate and build this community, the more, you know, education becomes accessible to people. So hopefully the less gray, gray nipples, gray areolas, we're going to, that's crazy to me.
Orange is wild enough. Gray is crazy to me. And it's a, you know, as you're well aware as a PMU artist too, that's an ongoing battle.
I mean, you can fix it once, but guess what? Three years later with fighting that. And so. It's almost like being a victim all over again, you know, because whatever you went through to lose the color, then you put it on and then now you have a gray one.
You had no areola. Now you got a gray areola. I mean, out of the frying pan into the fire.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So MD Anderson here is famous for their breast cancer center for all over the world.
Right. And so forever, I used to talk so bad about MD Anderson because they had their nurses doing these tattoos. Oh.
And they were so bad. Memory unlocked. Yes.
When I first started permanent makeup, I had a client come in who had had her brows done many years ago. No, her eyeliner done many years ago. And there was very little left.
It was a real thin gray line. And I said, where were these done? And she said, actually, my sister was a patient at MD Anderson. And the lady was tattooing there.
Like she would come to MD Anderson with her little cart. She would roll through and she just offered it to her while she's sitting in the waiting room. And how did I forget this until you just reminded me? That's wild.
You're just in the waiting room with your sick sister and somebody's like, want a face tattoo? And then to say, I should do this. Yeah. That is crazy.
Well, for years and years and years, they had their nurses doing them. And now I have trained three of their PAs. They've sent them to me to train because they have realized that's a very good moneymaker for them.
And so good for them. They paid for their PAs to come and to get training. So that has been a breath of fresh air as well to know that MD Anderson, six-month wait for areola tattoos that they now are giving their patients quality tattoos.
So this industry really is evolving and it's so good to see. Yeah, I think so. I think I told Jodi this and I'm going to plant it in your ear as well.
I think, you know, we have these permanent makeup boards, like we have SPCP, we have the other one. I think that we should have one specifically for paramedical because paramedical is very serious. It's a big topic, but it's so marginalized anywhere else because, you know, for any kind of micropigmentology academy or board or group, it's just a very small sliver of the work that they're actually focusing on.
I think there needs to be a bigger place that's committed specifically to helping with this huge category that's only growing. I mean, the cancer problem is not going away. Understands what they're regulating would be nice.
Well, let's build our own table and just make it really, really clear. I will be your cheerleader. Listen, you got to train first.
Well, come on, girl. Doctor here waiting for you. All right, well, Shira and I are going to take this offline then and I'll get some links so that I can take her training program.
I already have a doctor who wants to work with me. But in the meantime, if other people are interested, if they like your very blunt, say it like you mean it, training style and always having this continuing resource, where can people reach you? So Instagram, my Instagram handle is Ink Boutique Houston, and then my website is InkBoutiqueHouston.com. So pretty easy. Yeah, super simple.
I'll go ahead and link all of that in the description for anyone who's listening to the podcast. I'll make clickable links for anyone who watches this over on YouTube. And if you want to see her beautiful pink dog, Shania Twain, highly recommend that you go and watch this on YouTube.
In the meantime, I will see you all next week. Bye.
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