Meet Aleah Alvarado

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aleah Alvarado a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aleah, 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?

Ever since I was a child, I would see how hard my parents and grandmother worked to balance a home and desired lifestyle. Even after my parents divorced, witnessing my mother show up wholeheartedly and provide no matter the circumstances, I learned the importance of work ethic.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I was a makeup fanatic growing up and would play dress-up since I was a toddler using with my mom’s makeup. Years later, I launched an indie makeup brand, Haviic Cosmetics, in 2013 that catapulted my makeup artist career. Before pop-ups became well known, I would join other vendors at events to sell my cosmetics and customers would always assume I was an artist so I decided to go to beauty school in 2015. That led to a deeper connection to makeup and artistry for me, but this time, I had the opportunity to share it with others and help them feel just as confident and expressive as I had any time I played with makeup. Once the pandemic struck, my small business was impacted like so many others, and I leaned into social media to rebrand and quietly began creating content, which I still love today. What started as an escape to cope with anxiety transitioned to another passion that I tied to beauty. Branching into product reviews led to beauty education and teaching makeup artists proper etiquette. Helping makeup artists level up their career like a pro became my next quest and I launched services specifically available to makeup artists of all levels. First one being a professional makeup kit audit — I analyze a kit and offer a full assessment to help artists streamline their kit to its highest standards of quality and performance to align with their specialty service. Understanding the individual creative needs of each artist, I developed a one-on-one mentorship program tailored to makeup artists based upon their goals. Both services are available to artists virtually and/or in-person to those local to NYC. And most recently, I earned my state teaching license, enabling me to enter a new chapter of my career and begin teaching at an esthetics school in New York City.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Looking back, three key skills and qualities that have been most impactful in my journey are consistency, prioritizing and self-efficacy. The road of entrepreneurship is sometimes lonely but consistency breeds results. Knowing what and when to prioritize will strengthen your mindset and work ethic. Once self-efficacy takes hold, you possess the power to set the bar higher for yourself; bigger goals, more confidence and unwavering resilience. These are areas that I struggled with when I began building a career but the journey has better landscapes when you learn to focus the lens. Owning the decisions I’ve made, good or bad, have shaped my character and assured me that I don’t always need to have it all figured it out. Finding answers along the way can sometimes have a more meaningful outcome and I’m happy that I can trust myself to that extent.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I think it’s good to have a balance between our strengths and seeking improvement on areas we aren’t so strong in. Just because we’re strong in one area doesn’t mean we don’t have the capability of becoming strong(er) in another. Sometimes we limit ourselves by fearing the unknown of something new or assuming that we might fail at it. But I think getting too comfortable in one state can force us forget to challenge ourselves. For instance, I once took a special effects creature class to build my own prosthetic, and when it was time to finalize my design I knew my vision was a bit unorthodox. My creature was in the realm of a siren or sea monster but could still be strikingly beautiful and smothered in shimmer. Instructors frowned upon the concept and felt the two ideas couldn’t coexist but I stood firm and went forward with my choices. Although people didn’t see or understand my vision, I pushed myself beyond the norm of anything I had ever done to challenge myself with a new skill and unlock a higher potential. Reminiscing on that creation, I see areas that I could have improved on but I’m still proud of the stance I took to bet on myself and see it through.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://promakeupartistaleah.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/promua.aleah
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@aleah.promua

Image Credits

Erie Love
Sam
Kesho Kage
Kristen Graham
Aileen Gisel
Una