Nailing Down a Career
Some people set an alarm to buy concert tickets as soon as they go on sale; others to secure a spot for a popular college course. Then there are clients of Taryn Bennett ’23, whose reminders are set to book manicure appointments that typically fill up within minutes of posting. Her company, Nails by Taryn LLC, formally launched in 2022.
“I never thought my business would get to this point; I have Instagram photos with more than 50,000 likes,” Bennett says. In any given month, she delivers luxury nail service experiences to about 50 customers while managing her Bentley coursework.
Bennett’s designs on acrylic and natural fingernails are done freehand — with art ranging from gold glitter French manicures and comic art to chocolate bars and even a mini ultrasound image. Bennett says, “I love it when clients challenge me with new ideas.”
It was in 2020 when Bennett first started doing nail art out of her dorm room to earn money to pay for college. On some evenings and weekends in her first year of business, she did nails from home in Brockton, about 45 minutes from Bentley, and later at a small salon in town. Juggling the back-and-forth to and from campus became a challenge, but things changed when she got a chance to rent space closer to campus at a shop in Randolph. It also proved convenient for her Bentley clientele to access.
Bennett’s business grew organically, mostly by word-of-mouth but also with social reshares. She credits much of her success to her unique and detailed hand-painted designs. “If I have to, I'll go over a line five times to create the right line because I want it to be perfect,” says Bennett, who got her nail license in June of 2021. “I want every set of nails to be as if it were on my own hands.”
(Pictured below: the Boondocks, ultrasound and Coraline nail designs. Photos by Taryn Bennett.)
Bennett says the inspiration to register Nails by Taryn as an LLC came from a course at Bentley with Professor Jon Chait.
“Registering my LLC was a big step for me, and Bentley gave me the confidence to do that,” says Bennett, who is a Computer Information Systems major. “I took an Entrepreneurial Thinking course where I learned about differences between an LLC and a corporation and learned about creating a business from the ground up. I also got connected to different resources, including other successful Bentley entrepreneurs. All that was the extra push to make things happen.”
Bennett used Excel to set up a system to track business income and expenses. She manages her own supply orders, and she recently launched her own line of supplies and merchandise for customers to buy in store: a soak-off kit for at-home nail removal, cuticle oil pens and T-shirts.
But her business is more than just a passion: Bennett uses earnings to help finance everything from education to car insurance. Even as a teenager, she says she had to explore ways to be financially independent. “I credit a lot of my instinct to research and find resources to my internal drive to not ask for help and do things on my own. If I need to do something, I'll get it done.”
That perseverance is also helping Bennett accomplish another milestone: completing her Bentley degree in just three years. She plans to use her experience as an entrepreneur and her technical skills to pursue a career in business analytics or project management.
Below, Bennett shares a glimpse into her day as a full-time student and nail tech.