CONTURE helps entrepreneurs build successful businesses by combining education, personal growth and international experience.
What first attracted you to the Permanent Makeup industry, and how did you transform a craft into an international business operating across multiple countries?
Honestly!? It was never about makeup or tattoos. It was about the moment after…!!!
The moment someone looks in the mirror and something shifts!!! I love THAT! Not because they look different.. but because they feel more like themselves. That moment was addictive from the very beginning, and it is what kept me in this industry for over fifteen years.
I started at 18in Switzerland. No business plan. No roadmap. Just a craft, a relentless curiosity about people, and a refusal to think small!! What grew from that was organic but it was also intentional. Every time I outgrew one market, I expanded into the next. Ibiza. Barcelona. Mykonos. Dubai. Not because I followed a strategy but because I followed the demand. And demand follows quality, consistency and the ability to make people feel seen! The shift from artist to entrepreneur came when I relaxed that the work I was doing, teaching, building systems, training others had more impact than any single client appointment. That is when I stopped thinking like a craftsperson and started thinking like a founder.
You often say that beauty was never the most interesting part of your work. What have thousands of client interactions taught you about people, confidence and personal transformation?
People do not come to you for a procedure. They come to you carrying something!
A woman who has lost her eyebrows to illness. A mother who has not felt like herself in years. Someone who has been hiding behind a face they do not recognize. The technical work takes perhaps two hours. But the conversation that happens in that room… THAT is where the real work is done!!! You are part of their story.
What I have learned over thousands of interactions is this: confidence is not about looking perfect. It is about feeling congruent. When the outside finally matches something you feel on the inside, something unlocks. People stand differently. They speak differently. They make decisions they had been postponing for years. Their eyes talk with colors of happiness.
Your entrepreneurial journey spans more than fifteen years and includes both successes and setbacks. Which challenges shaped you the most as a founder, and what did you learn from them?
The challenge that shaped me most is not one I talk about easily. But it is the one that matters most in the end!
At 25, I had built everything I had dreamed of as a girl who grew up without much. A house. A business. Financial freedom I could not have imagined as a child. And then, within a short period of time, I lost all of it. I became seriously ill… at one point confined to a wheelchair. I could not work. And while I was in hospital, someone close to me who was struggling with addiction sold everything I had built. My company. My savings. Everything.
I rebuilt from a basement. Literally. I slept on an air mattress. During the day I showed up as an entrepreneur, coaching others, maintaining a presence, performing confidence I did not feel. At night I returned to that basement after 17houra work days. Two lives running in parallel! Very different. One visible, one invisible.
What that experience taught me is that resilience is not a personality trait. It is a decision you make in the hardest moment when you have every reason to stop. You either let the experience define your limits, or you let it expand them!!!
Those were not setbacks. They were lessons! And every single one of them brought me exactly here. I would never change one thing on that!
Many people give up on their ambitions when they face uncertainty or rejection. Why do you think some individuals keep moving forward while others abandon their vision?
This question has fascinated me for years. I have watched highly talented people disappear from industries they were made for, and I have watched people with far less obvious talent outlast everyone around them.
The difference is rarely skill. It is identity!
People who keep going have made their vision part of who they are, not just what they do. When you define yourself by the outcome, rejection destroys you. When you define yourself by the commitment, rejection becomes information. It tells you to adjust, not to stop.
The other factor is tolerance for discomfort. Most people retreat to certainty not because they cannot handle failure, but because they cannot handle the feeling of not knowing. The founders and artists who persist are not fearless. They are simply more comfortable sitting in uncertainty without letting it become a reason to quit.
You have rebuilt yourself and your businesses several times throughout your career. What does reinvention mean to you, and why is it such an important skill for entrepreneurs?
People often see reinvention as loss… losing a version of yourself, a business, an identity. I see it as the most honest thing an entrepreneur can do. Because the market changes. You change. The person you were when you started is never the person who finishes. If you refuse to reinvent, you end up defending a version of yourself that no longer exists.
The most important thing I have discovered about reinvention is that it requires you to let go before you know what comes next. That gap… between what was and what will be.. is where most people freeze. But that gap is also where the most important growth happens!!!
For entrepreneurs specifically, the ability to reinvent is what separates those who build something lasting from those who build something temporary. Markets shift, platforms change, industries evolve. The ones who survive are not the most talented. They are the most adaptable!!!
Today, in addition to running your academy, you mentor entrepreneurs, artists and business owners. What are the most common challenges people face when it comes to visibility, positioning and building a personal brand?
Most people I work with are not struggling because they lack knowledge or talent,they are struggling because some part of them believes they are not yet ready to be visible. Not successful enough. Not polished enough. Not certain enough. And so they wait for a moment of readiness that never arrives.
The second challenge is positioning without clarity. People try to be for everyone, and in doing so, they connect with no one. The most powerful personal brands are built on specificity – a clear point of view, a clear audience, a clear reason why you and not someone else.
And the third is consistency. Not in the sense of posting every day. But in the sense of showing up as the same person across every platform, every conversation, every piece of content. People do not follow brands. They follow people they trust. And trust is built through recognition over time.
You believe that many people spend their lives adapting to expectations rather than creating their own path. What advice would you give to those who want to break free from limiting beliefs and pursue their own vision?
Start by asking whose voice you are actually hearing when you tell yourself it is not possible.
Most limiting beliefs are not yours. They are inherited. From parents who needed you to be safe. From a culture that rewards conformity. From an industry that benefits from you staying small. When you trace the belief back to its origin, it often loses its power.
The practical advice I give is this: take one action that your limited self would not take. Not a hundred. One. Because momentum is built in small moves, and identity changes through behaviour, not through thinking.
And stop waiting for permission. No one is coming to tell you that you are ready. The permission you are waiting for has to come from you. It always did.
You are currently preparing the next international chapter of your business and life. What are your goals for the future, and what motivates you to keep pushing beyond your comfort zone after so many years of entrepreneurship?
What motivates me is the same thing that motivated me at eighteen. I want to build something that did not exist before I arrived.
The next chapter is international in the deepest sense … I am expanding CONTURE beyond the markets I know well, building an educational platform that can serve entrepreneurs and artists across borders, and stepping into spaces I have not occupied before. The UK is part of that vision one day for sure!!!
After fifteen years, the comfort zone I am pushing against is no longer about fear of failure. It is about the temptation to stay where I am already respected, already known, already comfortable. That kind of comfort is the most dangerous because it does not feel like limitation. It feels like success.
What keeps me moving is a simple question I ask myself regularly: if I stayed exactly where I am, would I regret it in ten years? The answer is always yes. And that is enough!!!!
Looking back on your journey so far, what message would you like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs who are just beginning to build a life and business on their own terms?
The path you are imagining probably will not look like the path you actually walk my loves! And that is not a failure of planning. That is the nature of building something real.
Be honest about what you actually want andf not what looks impressive, not what others expect, not what seems realistic. What do you actually want? Start there, and let that be your compass even when everything around you changes!!
Find your tolerance for discomfort and stretch it to the fullest!The entrepreneurs who last are not the ones who never struggle. They are the ones who have learned to keep moving while struggling.
remember this: The world does not need another perfect founder. It needs real ones.
I eish u a wonderful start into this week. I am absolutely excited about that.
Picturecredits Ilaria Perrella
Thank you Ilaria Perrella for the Interview
Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.
