Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Valerie Ochoa. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Valerie, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Confidence is something that absolutely did not come natural to me. Since childhood, I was so accustomed to questioning every move I make at least 3 times that it came as a surprise to me that everyone didn’t do that when I started paying attention in adult world. Around 20, I realized I hardly had any pictures of myself on my phone and also rarely made eye contact when talking to people. Again, surprised that this wasn’t natural for everyone and that’s sorta when I realized how much I lacked in confidence and talked with my therapist saying that was now my number one goal, to work on confidence.
I’m so grateful for that girl and the work I did. It wasn’t easy either, people say if you fake confidence it eventually becomes real however I don’t agree with that. I think we can’t lie to ourselves and our brains will always know when it’s fake, I had to genuinely learn to like- dare I say, love- myself and be proud of the woman I am.
So, I put genuine effort in getting to know myself, going out alone, doing things in the moment that truly felt good to me. Prioritizing my own comfort in settings, conversations and anything I had some control over. I ditched the “power through it” mentality that I think women get given to them at a young age oftentimes. I also put an honest effort on being easier in others, as I started to recognize and acknowledge that inner critical voice that I was ultimately afraid of receiving disapproval from. So, the more I avoided “feeding the beast” by passing judgement on others, I would consistently remind myself that I don’t know everyone’s story even the ones who I’m really close to. I learned to give grace as often as I possibly could, of course everyone deserved that side of me PLUS it re-trained my brain to stop looking for opportunities to pass a negative judgement on something. Slowly, quieting that critical voice who was also killing my inner light with each time it found something new to hate.
This helped me in business in a way I could have never anticipated! Am I millionaire, no? But I can sit here confidently and say I love who I am. I know I do right by people and I know I’m great at what I do. It’s just factual, instead of gaslighting myself into believing I’m secretly terrible and soon everyone is going to find out, I try to see myself as neutrally as possible and really decide if my actions were fair or not. If I can decide from a bird’s eye view that my actions weren’t justified, I know I can fix it and grow more.
Trusting myself was also huge in this. Keeping the small promises to myself like “I’m going to clean my room today” and “I will wake up early and accomplish what I need to get done” instead of accepting defeat and not following through helped build that trusting relationship with myself so that when a huge decision like “is this the right building to open my salon in?” Or “is now the right time to raise my prices?” I could remind myself that my goal is always to do what’s best for us (Valerie and Valerie) and to trust intuition with what I’m feeling is right.
In conclusion, I would say not lying to yourself, lessening the most critical voices in my head and putting effort in building trust with myself are the things that generated confidence for me now.
Thank you for the interview!
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?
My name is Valerie and I’ve been doing lashes for 5 years now, having started when I was 18 in December 2019. I opened my salon, The Dollhouse Salon Suite in 2022
My Hope with my salon was to create a place where woman could thrive and generate income and be truly independent though their businesses in the suites. I talk to women a lot in my appointments and when my clients would tell me about the problems in life they were facing SO many of them all tied back to money and lack thereof. This realization made me see that money isn’t evil, it is a tool that could help people out of so many unfavorable situations, and my new dream became seeing as many women as possible make enough money to stand on their own. I know the beauty industry did that for me and so many others- which is why aside from the salon I also have a huge passion for training and train lash artist through The Dollhouse Academy. My beginner program is accredited through the Arizona State Board of Cosmetology and actually allows me to also issue licenses to my students so right after my training they can behind working in a salon as soon as they see fit. It’s really important to me that upon class completion there is no obstacles standing in my students’ way of creating their career so their class kit also comes with everything they could possibly need to start lashing clients right away. Lashing clients and straining students is definitely my passions right now. I also love furthering my education and participate in a lot of trainings and conferences plus I host my own lash event in my town of Casa Grande. I keep this event as affordable as possible, never profiting off it but it’s my passion project where I’m able to get an intimate group of local artists together to not work and get lash freebies plus learn about new products and brands that could improve their businesses
My 4th annual event will be this April, and for the first time I’ll be speaking at it. My presentation will be on “The Psychology behind the service” and how we as the business owner can enhance the service we offer in ways that go beyond our technical skill and enter true service territory, to create for better connections with our clients and give them experiences they’ll always remember
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three skills I had to quickly acquire to be successful in business were adaptability, humility and problem solving. Putting my pride aside and looking for areas to make the product I put out the absolute best for the consumer even if it means I have areas that need improvement.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
One of the things I’m most grateful for is the support I had from my parents to pursue beauty school after high school. I have been asked many times in my career something along the lines of how my parents felt about me not going to college or how they must be surprised at how well this ended up Working out for me considering I never went to college. These comments are well-meaning but weird to hear because the idea of me not going to college was never an issue. Even in my senior portraits my mom had scissors and a comb incorporated- which shows how much she was down for me to pursue a trade. They’ve been there each step of the way, when it was time to paint the salon suite we were in there. When it was time to move into the bigger salon, they were my moving company. When I’m facing a conflict, they’re my advisors. I’m so glad to have their support that’s definitely the best thing they’ve done for me
Contact Info:
- Website: TheDollhouseAZ.com
- Instagram: @ValtheLashGal
- Facebook: The Dollhouse Salon Suites
Image Credits
Photos taken by Analysia Cruz @FilmsbyAb on IG
