We recently connected with Karly O’Keefe and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Karly, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
My father. He is the hardest working person I know. He is retired now and rightfully so. He worked in the Iron-workers union since he was 18. He would leave every morning before the sun came up and come home every night tired and covered in and bruises and debris from a tedious day of welding iron but he always had a smile on his face. He always made time to spend with us after work. He always asked me how my day was and he truly loved what he did. I can only remember him taking two sick days his entire career. Watching him work so hard but enjoy what he did everyday was incredibly inspiring. I’m so grateful to have had him as my role model and my father.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am an esthetician and my focus is helping people achieve confidence in their skin through corrective treatments. I take time to ask questions about home life, work life, and sometimes personal life to better understand my clients and come up with a plan that works for them as well as their lifestyle and budget.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1.) Stepping out of my comfort zone and doing the thing that I was most afraid of. I never intended to become a solo esthetician or start a business. After a few years of working for others, I realized that in order to offer my skills to other people I would need full creative control. It was a difficult decision for me at the time but looking back I am grateful I did the thing that scared me the most.
2.) Allowing myself space to make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. In the beginning I was so afraid to make mistakes and that my clients would leave me for it. I had to learn how to give myself grace and realize that my work didn’t define me as a person. That it was okay if I wasn’t the right fit for every single person that walked into my room and that didn’t mean I was bad at my job.
3.) Not all experiences have be good to learn something from them. To take something away from it. I have found that just because something doesn’t go according to plan, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lesson along the way.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Always, but what would life be without challenges right?
I think my biggest challenge with work right now is self efficacy. I think this may come from working alone, but not having someone tell me I’m doing a good job (or not good enough) has been a struggle for me. I’m trying to learn to be my own cheer leader but I’m struggling with knowing whether or not I deserve an applause.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.skincraftla.com
- Instagram: skincraftla
