Exploring Life & Business with Abbey Goth of Lashed by Abbey

Today we’d like to introduce you to Abbey Goth

Abbey, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I got my start in the beauty industry almost 10 years ago when I was 18 years old, right after graduating high school. It’s crazy actually, to think about the fact that this coming Fall will mark 10 years since starting my journey in this industry! It feels like a lifetime ago, but I can remember that time of my life like it was just the other day.

Growing up, I was someone who loved helping people, especially my friends. I loved being someone that could be there for my friends to encourage them and lift them up when they were going through tough life things. I had a lot of interest in becoming a therapist (this also was inspired by my mom, who has her PhD in Psychology), but I knew that traditional schooling wasn’t a good fit for me. I remember my mom jokingly saying to me one day that if she hadn’t become a therapist, she would have become a hairstylist, because she would still get to listen to people talk about their lives and their problems and give them advice. Even though she was joking, this stuck with me, and I decided to see if I would like doing hair. During my senior year of high school I started experimenting on my own hair and on my friends hair with good ole store bought boxed hair color (if you know, you know, and YIKES). Although I truly had no idea what I was doing outside of following the instructions on the box, I found that I actually really enjoyed coloring hair! I absolutely loved the feeling of fulfillment that I felt after coloring a friend’s hair and having them love the results. So I decided that hair was something I wanted to pursue as a career, and I applied and got accepted into Paul Mitchell the School Denver by the time I graduated from high school in 2015.

When I started my first day of cosmetology school, I was so excited! I was so happy to be getting the opportunity to do something that I thought I would love, and I was thrilled to study topics that I was actually interested in for the first time in my life. However, cosmetology school wasn’t a great fit for me, and I ended up dropping out 6 months into my program. Even though I was disappointed that that endeavor didn’t work out as I had imagined, something else had piqued my interest during my cosmetology program that I felt like I would enjoy more, and that was skincare. I felt like going into esthetics would be much more my speed, so, I re-enrolled into another beauty school program, this time at the Aveda Institute of Denver for esthetics. Almost exactly a year after starting my journey at Paul Mitchell, during the Fall of 2016, I began my new journey at Aveda!

My experience at Aveda was far different than my previous beauty school experience. I absolutely fell in love with learning everything about esthetics, and I excelled in my program. I was not only able to make people feel good by providing relaxing services, but I was able to actually help them with their skin concerns and help them feel confident and beautiful in their skin. I finally felt those feelings of fulfillment again, and I thoroughly loved every single second of my time at the Aveda Institute. Before I knew it, my program was ending and I was getting ready to graduate! Right before graduation, a few of the girls in my class had signed up to take an eyelash extension certification. I had never heard of eyelash extensions before, and around this time is when they first started to become a popular service. I volunteered to be a model for one of my friends who was taking the eyelash course, and afterwords I myself wanted to learn how to do lashes as well.

I waited until after I had graduated and obtained my esthetics license from the state of Colorado to find an eyelash extension course, and in the Spring of 2017, I signed up for one! I actually didn’t think that I would like doing lashes, it seemed like such a time consuming and tedious service, and I didn’t think I would have the patience for it. But I knew that knowing how to do them would be a skill that could really benefit me since it was still a newer up and coming service in this industry. Little did I realize that signing up for that course would change the path of my career yet again!

After taking the eyelash extension course, I fell in love with doing lashes. It was an absolutely incredible feeling to put lashes on someone, and for them to open their eyes and instantly fall in love with the results and express how beautiful they felt. For the first year and a half of my career in esthetics, I worked at an Aveda salon as an esthetician doing facials and other skin care services during the week, and then I would do lashes out of my sister’s room at my mom’s house on the weekends. I still enjoyed doing skincare, but I realized after a while that doing lashes was what I was truly passionate about. Helping women feel beautiful by enhancing their natural beauty meant everything to me. I knew I wanted to transition to doing more lashes than skincare, and eventually the Aveda salon I worked at let me start doing lashes there. However, I wasn’t getting the kind of clientele I wanted or needed to sustain a career in lash extensions at that salon. I had a friend from the Aveda Institute who I knew had a lash studio, so one day I called her to see if she was hiring, and she was! I decided to quit at the Aveda Salon and go work with her, fully diving into my career of lashes.

I spent the next 5 years working at that lash studio, growing my clientele and falling more and more in love with doing lashes. During that time, I also started training others on how to do lash extensions. At first it was just unofficial training and helping out some friends in the industry. But in the beginning 2023, I became a certified educator through the National Association of Lash Artists (NALA) to officially be able to train, mentor, and certify up and coming lash artists.

In August of 2023, I decided that it was time to branch out on my own. I opened my very own lash studio in Lakewood where I take clients and also hold private lash trainings. I get to work with women daily, providing them with services that make them feel amazing and beautiful, while also creating a bond and talking with them about their lives, supporting them through their ups and their downs. I’ve watched multiple clients throughout the years begin relationships, get engaged, get married, and start families. I’ve also seen clients go through breakups and other heartbreaks, and I’ve gotten to be there to be a support for them through those times as well. The connections I have with my clients is exactly how I had imagined it would be when I thought I wanted to be a hairstylist, and those client connections mean the absolute world to me! I also get to teach and mentor estheticians and cosmetologists who want to begin a career in lash extensions, and help them get started in this industry. This career has given me everything I could have ever wanted and more, it has completely overflowed my fulfillment cup time and time again, and I am so beyond blessed to be where I am at today!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh boy, it definitely has not been a smooth road! I have faced many struggles and challenges throughout the years in my career. I won’t be able to share about all of them, but I’ll tell you about a few of the main challenges I faced.

I would say the first major challenge I overcame was getting diagnosed with ADHD. I was heavily struggling with undiagnosed ADHD in high school, I had a lot of trouble paying attention in class and retaining information. At the time, I thought I was struggling so much because I had zero interest in what I was learning in school, but I would later learn after starting cosmetology school that that actually wasn’t the case. There were multiple aspects of my cosmetology program that were just not clicking with me like it was clicking for everybody else. Feeling like I was behind led to feelings of extreme anxiety when it came time to work on real clients coming into the school to get their hair done. I was frustrated to still be struggling with retaining information, I was terrified about completely messing up on someone’s hair, and I felt overall defeated coming to the realization that doing hair might not be for me. Right around the time I was getting ready to drop out of cosmetology school is when I finally received my ADHD diagnosis and began taking medication to help me get a handle on it. Although it was too late to put my newfound focus to the test at Paul Mitchell, I feel like being medicated from the start of my experience at the Aveda Institute is something that really helped me excel in my studies with esthetics, and also in my career after graduating.

Another challenge came after taking my original eyelash extension course. I realized immediately that doing eyelash extensions is no easy feat. It takes a lot of time, patience, and practice to become a great lash artist. I would say it took about a year of practicing on friends and family to feel super confident in my work. It also takes a lot of time and patience to build a clientele. Having a full clientele doesn’t happen overnight, and once I transitioned to doing lashes full time at my friend’s lash studio, work was slow. I only had a couple of clients from Aveda, and I had to supplement my income by working another job as a waitress at nights. Slowly though, I started getting more and more new clients, until one day I had finally built up enough clients to quit my waitressing job. I cannot tell you how excited I was the day I was finally able to quit my waitressing job! It took a lot of time and patience to get there. There were many times I felt like giving up and quitting this industry all together, and I’m so glad that I didn’t.

Then came 2020. Covid. This was probably one of the biggest obstacles I’ve ever had to face in my career. By this point, I was only doing lashes full time. Everything shut down, and I was forced to completely stop working. I was making no money, and I had no idea when I was going to be allowed to go back to work! Thankfully the shut down only lasted for a couple of months, but the impact on my business was devastating once I was able to go back. A large part of my clientele were too scared of getting Covid still to come and get their lashes done. Another large part of my clientele couldn’t come back right away because they had lost their jobs or hadn’t been able to work during the shut down, and they couldn’t afford to get their lashes done anymore. I had a few clients come back right away, but it truly was like starting all over again with my business, and I had to build up my clientele all over again. I had to pick up a second job again, this time doing Uber Eats to help support myself. I would say it took about a year after the shut down to fully build my clientele back up to where it was before Covid. It was a very stressful and difficult year!

There have been other obstacles and challenges along the way, but with each bump (or crater) in the road, I have been able to overcome each one through resilience and the support of my absolutely amazing loved ones and clients.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At Lashed by Abbey, my passion is to help my clients feel beautiful by enhancing their natural beauty! I offer a range of lash extension services as well as other services like lash lifts and tinting, and brow services like brow waxing, lamination, and tinting. I use high quality products to ensure that my clients aren’t only receiving an excellent service from me, but they will go home with beautiful, long lasting results. My studio is a judgement free, safe space for all clients, and I strive to provide a calming and welcoming environment for everybody.

For those who are interested in starting a career in lash extensions, I offer private 1:1 trainings to licensed cosmetologists and estheticians, or those who are currently enrolled into an accredited cosmetology or esthetics program. My lash training provides extremely focused, hands on experience and education, and I also offer lifetime mentorship to my students. I want all of my students to feel confident in their work, and it is important for me that I get to be there to support them not only during their training, but afterwords as well.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Life is all about taking risks, especially when it comes to your career! If you have big goals and dreams, you have to just take a leap of faith sometimes, whether that be signing up for a course to learn a new skill or leaving a job to open a work space of your own. I personally never thought I would open my own lash studio, I was comfortable with working at someone else’s business for a very long time. But I knew that if I wanted to grow both personally and professionally, I needed to make that jump and go for it, and I couldn’t be happier that I did! I would encourage anyone who has a dream to follow their dreams. You only get one life to live, and you should live it doing something you love!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lashedbyabbey.glossgenius.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lashedbyabbey_/
• Email: lashedbyabbey.co@gmail.com
• Phone Number: 303-817-3718

Image Credits
Lashed by Abbey