New Year's summary 2019

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    So wow HAPPY NEW YEAR wonderful, best of you! It's New Year's Eve today !!

    New decade too, fy seventeen how fresh it feels, I shudder. I really feel that 2020 will be the start of a new era in life. It may just be naively dreamy, but it feels like 2019 was a break year to land on the right path in life, but that 2020 is the time when everything will take off.

    I certainly said that in 2016 too haha, but now I'm 4 years wiser;)

    The future may show, but I think it feels incredibly nice that the 10s and 2019 are over now. Fresh and promising !!

    Here is a post with some thoughts about 2019 and 2020, mixed pictures from the year and a summary of goodies!

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    Annual horoscope 2020

    Do you believe in horoscopes? :) I definitely do not believe in everyone but there is a blog I follow and her horoscope is almost always right for me! This is the blog Helena's Horoscope (her name is also Helena, it is not a personal horoscope I found haha).

    I read mine annual horoscope for Cancer now and it is so promising that I almost collapse!

    Last year I was a little disappointed with the annual horoscope, not because nothing was right but because it did not feel so spicy - and you want it this way at New Year;) But with the results in hand, so much has been true, it was not a lot more fun years than that simply haha. The horoscope must be honest too, otherwise it is no idea.

    That's why I was SUPER HAPPY now that the 2020 horoscope is, on the contrary, great! It was already stated in the 2019 horoscope that "2020 will be so much more glorious, warmer and more loving and will come as a deserved reward after the last few years. (Where 2016 may have broken records in life trials…)”And in 2016 my mother passed away and all the shit that came after that, so that's the point.

    This year, the horoscope says that I focus on many changes and rapid (positive) turns, new projects and business ventures, and I am lucky in terms of partnerships in business. The only thing I should take seriously is my health and prevent health problems.

    You never know what the year will offer, but with the plans I have in my back pocket, every single sentence in the whole horoscope sounds like it can be true - IF my plans go as planned, that is, I really hope that the horoscope will be right ♥

    * Leats in the archive for a picture where I look excited* Lol

    Here I am on Gotland the day before Midsummer when we celebrated at the home of my friend Frida who moved there this year! :)

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    Dreamy doer entrepreneur vs. naive idiot?

    Last Sunday, Miska and I sat in our hot tub for 2 hours and talked, so heavenly cozy!

    I then realized that I have had two different thoughts in my head this year that contradict each other, where I have had a hard time knowing who is right.

    Like this: I have always been a dreamy person who speeds up and tests my ideas! But there is so much lately that has not turned out as I had hoped. Therefore, I have suddenly become a little cautious .. As soon as I dream of something, I feel that I am a "naive idiot" who does not think reasonably but is just a blown bimbo who does not understand better - instead of a dreamy entrepreneur who speeds up, test and just drive! How do you know what is what? Lol.

    I have come a long way in starting my own make-up brand but still say "I'm checking out the possibilities for possibly starting my own brand”. I would like to invest more in the webshop (bring in new brands etc.) but even there I feel a resistance for “What if I buy a lot of new things that do not sell, but just put in jobs and money unnecessarily”.

    We talked about all this in the hot tub yesterday and I felt very strongly that I should really start dreaming big again! I should not be so afraid of it! I am convinced that 90% of success is to test, test, test and see what ideas get wings - in the end, something will work.

    If I 1. have fun when I dream, 2. have fun when I test and 3. something good it will always lead to - what are the risks even if it is actually true that I do this just because I am a naive idiot? There is no reason :) I. wants be a naive idiot, haha!

    My best ballpark in life ♥ Here we borrowed the neighbor's boat and rowed out on the lake we live by and talked, rowed, laughed and played. A really good summer day! :)

    Healthy self-discipline vs performance anxiety?

    I have had more double votes in my head this year haha. Two other thoughts that quarrel with each other are the balance between working diligently vs. to take care of their health and not work themselves to death.

    Where is the line between healthy self-discipline and responsibility and an unhealthy performance anxiety where you whip yourself too much?

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    I do not know myself, but I strongly believe that you have to streamline your work so that you get more benefit in a shorter time. So - if you work efficiently, you can achieve success without working yourself to death.

    It's a bit like the last episode of my and Tommy's podcast "really effective". If you want to delve deeper into the subject of working efficiently - then you can earn more but work less! :)

    I remember this day well - in the morning I put extra work into planning and prioritizing the day's to-do list, which meant that I then worked very focused and efficiently all morning. So when Miska later in the day tattooed my old friend from her teens, I had time to sit with her afterwards and talk to catch up without running out of time :)

    Tommy says that every minute you spend on planning saves 10 minutes during implementation. I believe in that!

    Summary 2019

    Maybe you also want a small annual summary? :) I myself just want to just look ahead now, I have always loved to look back, be nostalgic, compare year after year, etc. but it has completely changed - I just want to look ahead!

    But you will still get a summary of 2019:

    New salon room!

    The biggest difference is that we moved the salon - on January 2, 2019, we opened the doors to our new little cozy crawl space!

    We had then for 3 years tested the wings with a huge and luxurious salon, tenants and more treatments with massage, teeth whitening, facials, body treatments etc. But due to demolition contract in that room + that we still owned this smaller so we decided to move back and invest in our core business: lashes, eyebrows, makeup and permanent makeup and only our own employees.

    Quite the right decision (!) Despite the fact that from the outside it looks like we have settled down a bit, but it has actually only contributed positively both practically and financially :)

    On January 1, we moved everything important from the old premises, the cash register, the computers and sales products. That same night, just hours later, the storm shattered one of our large shop windows, which broke completely!

    How big are the odds that we moved everything the day before? :) Here we talk luck in bad luck. Otherwise we would have had to cancel all customers because you can guess how cold it was in there, also a great risk of theft before we got a company there that covered with chipboard.

    Here is Miska hanging up paintings in the new place :) He managed to drill in an electrical cord in the wall so it turned black in the whole room as well, the day before the opening, that panic !!!

    The change with the new salon has in any case gone very well! Both customers and colleagues are satisfied! :)

    It was positive for the economy also in addition to the “small” detail that due to notice periods and agreements with tenants we had double rents from October 2018 to March 2019, which emptied the company's buffer account. Only the reduction of the rent after the move was SEK 50,000 a month, so you can imagine how big rental costs we had during the months with double rent, iiih!

    So we had a bit of a financial crisis for a while, I can admit this in retrospect .. But we survived it too! Pjuh! :)

    Here you see the hippie entrepreneur Miska who no longer has an office but fixes accounting documents at home on the carpet in a bare torso and a pouf as a shelf;) ♥

    Speaking of which, another positive change in 2019 is that we have started accounting with Fortnox! Everything is done digitally, no more paper tjoho!

    My workplace itself has looked like this most of the year, haha.

    Since I do not have an office at the salon, it has not been as easy to book an appointment with me anymore, but I have a bunch of regulars who come to me regularly and I am so happy about them! ♥ When I'm home so working me but at the salon so mysjobbar I haha. That's how it feels!

    Note our stylish watch in the background with the Creative Makeup logo on;)

    I have become a folder!

    On January 15, little Mileya, or Helmi as we called her before she got her name, was born ♥ Miska and I have become bonus parents and there has been a lot of baby hanging out and babysitting during the year when Annika started working already in April :)

    Love this picture haha! Permanent makeup is the shit!

    Miska and Mileya at the salon when she was 6 days old :)

    3 weeks ago I had a customer who said “but where is that charming baby I met last time?"And the customer in the make-up chair next door agreed to the conversation"yes she is so cute !!" Lol :)

    When the customers are in the treatment rooms, you can fool around in the make-up studio :)

    It's not every day you had 100% peace of mind;) But we have steered it better with childcare now so Annika can work without my and Miska's job being affected.

    But we had a lot of fun too hahaha!

    Fewer colorful make-ups in the blog

    This spring, I made a decision to reduce the amount of super-creative make-up in the blog and invest more in step-by-step make-up that people actually want to do on themselves and more tip posts and product focus.

    The result is that the blog takes much less time of my working days, it was not really financially defensible before, I also feel that you who follow me appreciate it?

    It is difficult to decide because not everyone comments and likes (almost 0% if you compare with the number of readers / followers haha) but what I notice is that the customers at the salon have started to mention my posts more. And it's great fun!

    But here is a make-up from the beginning of the year before I reduced this type of looker :)

    It has become a lot of evening work in the photo studio, the blog and my posts still take much more time than you might think!

    I have made more tip posts which is fun! Here I answered the usual question "how high up should you apply the eye shadow?".

    I have also done more make-up with a product focus. Instead of showing "a glittery make-up", I have shown "this is how you can use this glitter".

    We have also done more marketing in social media. We spread this ad this summer!

    We have not previously followed up the statistics on marketing and distribution, but we have started this year! You should not only measure finances but what leads to the economy as well and then marketing and visibility in social channels is very important!

    More hobbies

    Before, I worked so much that I basically had no free time, then I was a homeowner and then all my free time went to renovate, carry firewood and fire, clean and fix etc.

    But since December 2018 we now live in a small guest house at Annika's home and she lives in a modern house and a simple garden so there are no musts at all except our chickens :)

    Therefore, I have had more time for other things!

    I have sewn a lot :) Annika has a whole sewing room in her house that I can borrow, LUXURY!

    I sewed this for Mileya, she's so nice in it! Annika has sewn trousers from the star fabric so she has a whole outfit!

    Here I changed the fabric on my bikini that has become dull so it had to turn black instead. Much better than buying a new one!

    Here you can see the bikini, but I was actually going to tell you that I have started writing a book and be amazed too! Here I sit and sketch ideas. It will not be finished for a while haha, what time it takes :) But fun work! I have written two short children's books as well, which Miska will draw pictures for is the idea.

    There have been many walks! Once I walked alone in the woods, was lost for 45 minutes haha. But we have picked a lot of mushrooms that have become good dinners !!

    I have made my own rings too! Of shells that I found on a vacation before. The one on the little finger is a seashell that I filed holes in and the others I have glued on finished ring frames in rose gold that I ordered at home.

    And sometimes you combine work and leisure - here I take care of our little chicken who was rejected by her mother while I work ♥ Now she is a huge hen named Donna and will at any time start laying eggs! So much fun!

    Health & meditation

    As you know, I have had problems with throat infections for 1.5 years now and what it is due to is unclear, but I have at least tested extremely hard to overcome this! Various health cures, supplements, healing and meditation have been a major focus. Relaxation, positive thoughts and letting go of anger, sadness, bad conscience etc.

    The girl who hates blood tests and comforts herself with a chocolate ball afterwards.

    There have been a lot of doctor visits and blood tests, I have been tested for HIV and blood cancer and stuff but luckily it has not shown anything. Although I wish it had shown something small that is not serious - so I can get over the problem. But we still do not know what it is, will be visiting again in February anyway. I have had 19 throat infections in 1.5 years with fever and swollen and white-spotted tonsils - but which are not due to streptococci or other bacteria they have grown.

    I'm a mystery :)

    Here I sit and meditate and test self-healing! I tested a real healing as well but it did not work, I think you need to go more times in such cases but it gets pretty quickly very expensive then.

    I booked a meditation trip too! I stayed away from throat infection that month but got such large and swollen lymph nodes under my arms instead that I could not take a swim one day because it hurt too much. Maybe managed to meditate that infection to the lymphatic system instead :)

    I have also tried various home remedies, supplements and exercise! Here you see a glass of homemade nettle tea that dad made. He is a healthy 86-year-old (87 in Feb) who drinks nettle every single day so it feels like a winning concept! :)

    Another method was to tattoo the mañana as a memory stick on the wrist. Lite hakuna matata-feeling!

    So being mañana is not about for me that I should postpone things "until tomorrow" or take less responsibility, without being able to laugh at complicated situations, not feel bad about small problems and also to jump on things without thinking through it 100 times, be spontaneous! Life should be fun! This is my personality really, but it has been so much responsibility and problem solving in recent years that I lost the part of myself a little bit that I wrote about at the beginning of the post. I need something that reminds me of this, like a remember-note that I see all the time;)

    I think it has actually worked!

    Dear colleagues ♥

    And then I have to pay tribute to our fantastic team at the salon as well, as they have fought and been good this year! Made everything work at the new salon, changed their work schedules and took great responsibility in terms of orders, customer service and everything required for the salon to be a good workplace for everyone and a wonderful business for customers.

    These three, then, we would not have had such a good salon as we have if it were not for them!

    And we also have photo-shy Malin who also did a great job even though I do not show her in the picture;)

    Applause to them !!! ♥

    Freelance, podcast & more

    We have had some other fun assignments during the year too!

    Miska built another new website Peragenda.se where we did a nice teamwork - he did the website and I was the photographer for the pictures!

    Check out the professional photographer! ;) Humble etc.

    The picture on the iPad is not a hit, it is actually our curve on Creative Makeup that shows how quickly we increased our revenue after we took the help of Peragenda's business development "really effective".

    Actually, I'm not good at taking photos at all, I'm just a bastard in photoshop haha. Here you see before and after editing.

    So we got the fun idea that Tommy and I would start a podcast on business development too! Two episodes are out now, so much fun! Search for "Effective for real" on Acast, podcasts (or other podcasts) and you will find it :)

    I have gone on some freelance jobs as a makeup artist too! Several times on Disruptive Materials where they took pictures for their website.

    Here's another time at Disruptive Materials.

    And here I was at Disruptive Materials event night for investors and partners and broke records in "who hung the longest" :) I have Upsalite in my hands and you got such a sickly good grip, would never have been able to hang for so long otherwise you start to slip Quickly!

    Here I was in Stockholm and made up the artist Kiddo who was going to release a new song. Skull details that would look a bit animated, not so realistic.

    It was fun! I rarely do freelance work but they did not get a single makeup artist in Stockholm who could do skeletal details so they had to hire me from Uppsala :)

    Spanish dreams

    Now I will tell you something I did not write before, when Miska and I were in Spain in September, we actually looked at several houses!

    We really can not afford to live near the sea, but we found some cheap ones further inland that we could actually afford. Much cheaper than moving somewhere around Uppsala.

    In terms of work, we can not move to Spain full time yet, but if you find a bargain, you could buy it.

    I actually fell in love with one of the houses, but after weighing the pros and cons, we realized that it was a little too far inland and too high up in the mountains. It had taken 1.5 hours from the airport and in winter there is a risk of frost in the mornings and evenings. For the cheap money it might have been worth it anyway and I'm still eager to strike sometimes haha but we have still made the decision that it will not be this house, but we would rather wait longer so that we can afford something that is not lika off :)

    But if we had struck, this olive grove would have been my view for morning coffee right now. Gaah I had released this house but now I get hungry again hahaha!

    But we will not :) we will find a better location if we wait and also we will not have time to be there so much now that Miska has started with eyebrow tattoos and I will start a make-up brand. So now I have to release it again;) But it has still not been sold haha.

    Miska has started with eyebrow tattoos!

    Another huge change that also came very spontaneously is that Miska became Annika's new apprentice for permanent makeup!

    He is incredibly fast learner too and has already had so many satisfied customers, it's really fun!

    Now we spin on that maybe it's so we will test move to Spain before we buy something for real - that Miska rents in a salon and works seasonally there! How fun would that not be? :)

    Miss the first brow tattoo - on a banana! :)

    Here he practiced on the machine in general and played loose :) He is so good at drawing!

    Here is a tattoo he did last week :) Now he has opened up times in January that you can book online at our home page!

    Started the development of my own make-up brand!

    My biggest dream in life is to start my own make-up brand, I know I could do it really well!

    But how to proceed is not something you can just google your way to, it's so much that I did not know how it works.

    How can there be so many bad products on the market?Is a question I have asked many times. I have not come that far yet but am already beginning to understand why.

    Firstly, there are extremely many decisions that have to be made for financial reasons, everything that is good is of course expensive. You can almost feel compelled to make decisions that result in a worse end product in terms of both packaging and ingredients just because it is not possible to start at all otherwise. Another example is the number of shades in relation to the minimum number that must be manufactured. Another nuance affects the start-up capital enormously.

    I have also heard things like "you can not be so picky because the manufacturers will not do as many test formulations as you like"And"Packaging companies will stop answering if you ask too many questions“Because I am not an established brand that can buy millions of stocks of every product. ”You can make that decision because you have to, but you can tell the customers that you made the decision because of this and this positive reason, they do not need to know”.

    Although I really do not intend to settle for anything worse if I know it can be done better, I would rather not start at all. I intend to fight gray-haired to raise start-up capital to produce the best of the best and then market the iron so that I can spread my masterpiece!

    If you do like everyone else, you will get the same results as everyone else, it's that simple :)

    Here I am with my first sample! With both packaging and content. I'm so pleased! However, there is one thing on the packaging that needs to be changed so that it is not a dealbreaker, but as I said, I am not satisfied;)

    Mid 2020

    Now I will sit down with a tradition that I do every year - write down what I think and hope will happen in the coming year! Then next year I will evaluate it and write a new one for the coming year again :) It is very fun!

    I keep that text private, but I can share some details with you:

    • I will dare more again! Test new projects and ideas!
    • Next New Year's Eve, my own products will be ready and we will pull the last levers to launch my own makeup brand in the spring of 2021!
    • I will get some kind of offer for a fun side project, preferably something that has to do with writing! For example. articles or launch one of my children's books :)
    • Miska will be a sought after permanent makeup artist with a lot of bookings, and will continue to think it's as fun as he does now!
    • I will be more at the salon and work a little less from home
    • It will be a trip to Spain again, maybe a longer business trip where Miska gets a tattoo? ;)
    • The year will generally be more problem-free, happy and wonderful on all levels - both with work, finances and leisure! ♥

    My feeling for the new year AND a new decade! ♥ 2020 here I come !!!

    Now I will shower, put on make-up and then a lot of people will come to our house so we will eat well, melt tin, predict the future and just have fun!

    I wish you all a really nice day and a HAPPY NEW YEAR! :) ♥

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    Helena Amiley
    Helena Amileyhttps://www.imakeyousmile.se
    I write mostly about beauty but also offer glimpses from the entrepreneurial life and the construction of our own camper van. Vanlife here we come!

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