Client Stories: Ulla Gaudin

Who: Ulla Gaudin, Celebrity Makeup Artist, New Orleans, USA. (http://tiffinandposh.com )

Our Work Together: Re-brand, Website MakeOver, 6 month Business Coaching 

Ulla Gaudin is a bundle of energy. When she walks in, she lights up the room. Even if it’s a virtual zoom room. You’d have a tough time believing she’s also mom to two young ones.

When we first met, Ulla was quite frustrated. She’d been trying to get her business going for over a year, she’d signed up for some big name ‘Build Your Business’ courses… and more than a year in she was still struggling to sell her packages at the $100 price point. She thought it was too high.

We first connected for a website audit. She thought if she could just tweak her website.. perhaps… you know… Instead we ended up with a few Intensive Strategy Sessions where I showed her two key things that completely changed the way she saw herself, and her business (more about that in a moment). She continued working with me over the next few months to actually put those changes into motion, including a complete rebrand of her business and website.

In our 6 months or so together, she

• Completely turned her business around – from struggling to sell $100 packages, to having clients reach out to her and happily pay $2500 for her new packages (even though her email list was less than 200 at that point!)
• Signed 7 speaking engagements (which is way more than many professional speakers)
• Grew her email list to ~1000
• And suddenly found she was a celebrity in her own right with her own fans – a stranger walked up to her in a restaurant and asked if she was THE Ulla Gaudin.

But the best change of all has been in Ulla herself. Our work together has completely changed the way she sees herself.

Her journey from the first time we spoke to now is the stuff dreams are made of. From being a struggling entrepreneur to having ‘arrived’; from hustling to working in a state of joy and flow. And most of all, to acknowledging her true worth, her ‘celebrity’ status ( around the 4 min mark in the video) and her true mission – empowering women.

Oh and did I mention she did ALL that while running her ‘other’ business, continuing her celebrity makeup work, helping her husband through massive business changes AND being mom to two amazing boys.

In her words:

” Working as a makeup artist in the film industry for more than 20 years I had been wanting to get out of the film industry because of the crazy hours, for the longest time.

My original idea was to offer makeup services for just about anybody out there.

When I came to you Richa, my idea was to sell these little $100 one-on-one packages.. which I was NOT selling…because people in the United States don’t pay $100 to get their makeup done. They pay $35. But because of my background, I was not willing to do $35 makeup applications.“

So what do you do when your business is just not working out? You go back to the drawing board. Over the next few weeks, we completely changed her business focus. The idea was the same – we just changed the target market and got super specific with her message, branding and website. This paid with an amazing response the day we just announced her website:

Over the years, Ulla had worked with the stars. The who’s who of Hollywood and many Oscar winning celebs.  But through her first year in business and our first few months together, she was hiding. She just didn’t acknowledge what a big achievement that was. Like so many other women, she was constantly undermining her own achievements.

” (In the industry) We just don’t talk about the people that we work with. It is so ingrained in us, that we just don’t talk about it.

I have worked with Brad Pitt

I have worked with Eva Longoria.

I’ve worked with Laura Dern

I have worked with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger. “

In our initial sessions, I nudged Ulla out of her comfort zone. Based on her current network, I helped her design what felt like the perfect high end weekend group program at 10x the value of her first package. That takes a big leap of faith and Ulla was gutsy enough to go with it.

But when we launched it – it tanked. Big time. No one signed up. Not one person.

Instead of throwing in the towel, or throwing tantrums like most people would, we listened to the feedback from her peeps and then took a bold step. We did something completely off course and counter intuitive. Instead of the group program, we came up with an even higher end 1:1 weekend program, at $2500.

” It was so awesome… I didn’t have to sell at all! They basically called me and said I want to do this!

And so $100 didn’t sell.  But at $2500 people were throwing their money at me!

That was a big eye opener! “

From there… it was upwards and onwards.

” What I love the most is that you’ve got me out of my little comfort zone bubble where I thought I had to go and do everybody’s makeup for $100 and nobody’s even going to pay me for that!

It just goes back to the very beginning…and everything from there on. I could not have done any of it by myself!

6 months is a really short time in business. If I hadn’t gotten out of my head and let you change what’s in here…I would still be offering those $100 packages and nobody would buy it. “

Watch her story in this video :

• It’s not really about makeup. It’s about empowering women. [2:30]
• Acknowledging your own achievements and what a big difference that one word ‘CELEBRITY’ makes [3:15]
• From struggling to sell $100 packages to having clients queue up for $2500 packages. [6:00]
• How listening to your clients leads to good things – another high end package that sold itself “The Forbes Photoshoot”[9:00]
• The most effective way to connect with your audience – and have fans swarm you at a restaurant [12:30]
• Practice pays off – and helps land 7 speaking engagements [15:30]
• The most effective way to get out of your own way – work with a business coach [22:45]
• The fear of missing out, trying to please everyone and other struggles [26:00]