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Stacey Banfield left school at 16 to work on the Chanel counter at Ballantynes. Today she runs a team of 12 artists under the SB Collective, is booked two years ahead for weddings, and has never spent a dollar on advertising. She also put her life savings into launching her own product brand, Soleil & Soul Beauty.

Andy and Stacey cover how weekend freelance work outgrew her counter wage, and the accountant exercise that showed she was sending $30,000 of work a year to other artists and getting almost no thanks for it. They talk about why she hires for people skills over makeup skills, how she handles wedding-morning drama, and why chasing follower counts doesn’t matter when word of mouth fills the book. She also explains the gap she saw in the market for brush cleansers, the NZ-native ingredient Totarol, and getting stocked back where she started.

Recorded at Red Nine | businesses building Canterbury

Thanks to Plato, helping ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

00:00 Intro

00:56 SB Collective vs Stacey Banfield Makeup Artist

02:27 Handing clients to the team and keeping the quality up

03:47 Leaving school at 16 to get into makeup

05:48 From the Chanel counter to going full time

07:49 Low risk, a beauty blog and $30k of turned-away work

10:19 What a wedding morning actually looks like

12:20 Difficult bridesmaids and being the bad guy

15:35 Why people skills beat makeup skills

17:43 Why she’s stayed in Christchurch

19:01 Chanel, Tom Ford, MAC and the blogging era

21:10 No comments, still booked two years in advance

23:05 Launching Soleil & Soul Beauty

26:19 Skin first: SPF, actives and TikTok trends

32:30 Flown to New York by Clinique

35:04 Brush cleansers, Totarol and stocking at Ballantynes

37:30 Advice for two years into business

38:58 Quick makeup and skincare tips

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