How To Grow Your PMU Business In 2025

Permanent make up has changed, and if we want to hit 6 figures a year then we are going to have to change too. 

I’ve helped over 1000 artists and grown three different beauty businesses to capacity, including my permanent make up business, even when it was closed in Covid. 

So in this video I’m going to explain what three important things I’d do if I started a permanent make-up business now, and also what old practices just don’t work anymore. 

So let’s dive in with the first thing I would do if I was starting out now. 

Back in 2016  you could post some before and afters and that would be enough, but we are now in the age where just posting transformation photos isn’t going to cut it. There are so many amazing personalities online and we are now in competition with all of them. 

So the first thing I would focus on right from the get go is making ourselves stand out.

So how do we compete? Well we’re gonna have to get ourselves out there. We’ve all heard that people buy from people they know, like and trust, but in today’s social media, it’s more than that. Having a personal brand is so much more important because people invest in you and your story. 

Building a personal brand is going to give you an advantage over others and help build your credibility so putting your face on camera has never been more important. But are there ways to mess this up? 

Absolutely. Your brand is going to have to be aligned with your goals. Wanting to appear as a trustworthy name in the industry but just posting videos of us out drinking with our mates isn't going to build that trust. 

But also pretending to be something we’re not won't hit either. Authenticity sells. It would be exhausting trying to keep up a facade for years. We will find our tribe when our authentic words reach the right audience who resonate with them. So get the camera out and start filming. Film your journey, film your practice, film your struggles, Film your work too. 

But we’re  going to struggle to film our work if we don’t have any right? And it is so much tougher to get clients than before, so if I was to start again now, this is the second thing I would do. 

Nobody is going to know we exist if we don’t have a portfolio to share. The old habit is to run discounts. This is something I absolutely wouldn’t do. People absolutely see through discounts now, and they make us appear desperate. Once we discount our work, we signal that our prices are up for negotiation. It then gets hard to put our prices up again and we’ll just get people waiting for our next sale or discount. . 

At Eternal Bond we ONCE, just once, ran a Black Friday deal  on our training that wasn’t even that effective,  I honestly don’t really know why we did it. I think we just felt we had to because everyone else did. and even 6 months later we had people saying they would only book with us if we agreed to that previous price. Discounts bring price shoppers and can damage your brand, so here’s what I would do instead. 

I would find people who we really want to work on, with amazing skin or lips and do their treatment for free. FOR FREE YOU SAY? You just told me not to discount! Yeah But free work doesn’t work quite the same as discounting. 

A discount is there for everyone to see. Free work, especially on people with large social media accounts or influencers allows access to their audience without anyone knowing they didn’t pay. 

Let’s look at these lips I did. They’re on Youtube thumbnails, all over my social media, even in my training manuals. I did these for free, and the outcome was so good that around 20 people booked immediately from seeing this transformation, That one session of free work made me more than TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. 

So how do we pick who to work on for free? We don’t want to throw away our time for no return.  So first off do they have a big following , but not just large, but a following of our ideal client? And does their online presence align with our brand and values?  If so, we can come up with an arrangement, but we also need to make sure that it suits us.

I also only do free work on people who have amazing skin or someone I know I can make a really amazing transformation on that will stop people scrolling. These lips had next to no pigment and were a stunning shape, so I knew I was going to create a phenomenal before and after. 

Before we carry out any treatment, we need to make sure it’s going to work for us, so we need to  get this part locked down! I would make sure that anyone that gets a free treatment allows me to film the entire procedure so I can have hours of footage including my setup, measuring up, close ups of the procedure, multiple before and afters, a video testimonial, healed result photos, a healing series of short videos, healed results videos and also a review on all platforms.

I would expect collaborations on instagram and a set amount of content agreed beforehand, and this needs to be in a contract. I would also make them sign to not disclose the free nature of the work so it stays under wraps. 

The biggest brands in the world still give stuff away for free to get eyes on their product, and that’s not changed. 

But what has changed since the days of easy 6 figure PMU businesses? 

Well the economy for one. Yep things are tougher for everyone both in the beauty and tattooing industry. It is harder to get clients, and there are many more permanent make-up artists out there, so we are all competing so much more. 

So the third thing I would do if I started a PMU business now, is focus my efforts where they’re most likely to end up with lots of bookings.

Did you know that if millennials are our target market we are 5 times less likely to get a booking than if we target a different demographic? In the US more than half the wealth is owned by boomers, compared to only 10% owned by millennials. When the economy tanked and bills went up, then it stood to reason that those with mortgages and children’s mouths to feed were the ones hit hardest, and the ones who would have to make savings. 

So why should our target market be boomers? Think about it? They have the income, post menopausal women are plagued by hair loss and miss the fuller eyebrows of their youth, and these women need our help. So how do we attract them? 

The first thing we need to do is make sure that our ideal boomer client is well represented in our content. I know so many artists that only post pictures of young girls with perfect skin. 

Well our 70 year old client isn’t going to see herself in those photos and feel motivated to book with us. I have so many clients in their 60s, 70s and even 80s and I'm sure they come to me  because I regularly post work of people just like them. 

Will they be the most pixelated, beautiful brows I’ve ever created? No, but it will signal to a more mature client that I know how to work on skin like hers and she will be safe with me. Learning to work on more mature skin was one of the best skills I ever learned and made sure I stayed fully booked when the economy tanked.. 

So if we are going to change the demographic of people we target, then it stands to reason that we are going to have to change where we go and look for them. Betty, who is 65 probably isn't going to be hanging around on Tik Tok. She’s much more likely to be on Facebook, or even in real life places like local social groups.  So our marketing tactics will have to reflect that. 

We’re probably more likely to get Betty from a leaflet than a youtube short so don’t discount these methods totally, even though they are considered old fashioned and ineffective now they do still work for the older generation. 

Learning how to change with the times to make you as visible as possible is just one of the things I teach in my beauty business mentorship programme. For weekly advice on how to grow your beauty business, join my newsletter here