Amy Ryan: The Woman Who Refuses to Be Put in a Box

Female Founder Stories
Written By Shannon Kate Murray, Founder & Editor of High Flying Design

Amy Ryan talks to Shannon Kate Murray, founder and editor of High Flying Design, about building Lip Lock Aesthetics and its training academy in Liverpool, and why she'd rather explore every part of herself than fit inside one box.

 

Amy Ryan skipped most of secondary school, leaning on endometriosis to stay home. Her mum changed the school's alert number to her own phone so the messages never got through. When Amy eventually left with no plan and no direction, her dad wrote a letter to the council and got her an accountancy apprenticeship. She didn't choose it. He chose it for her.

Photo: Amy Ryan

Then came an MS diagnosis, discovered in a work toilet when her legs went numb as she flipped her hair in the mirror. A doctor who laughed at her. A group dismissal from the council. An aesthetics qualification she began on an RAF base in Oxford, completing the theory in a week before months of hands-on training. A baby. A business she had to build because there was genuinely no other option. Five thousand pounds in deposits for a training academy she would eventually refund, because she got too far inside her own head.

"If I don't action it, someone else is going to do it. And then I'm going to have to watch them."

So she stopped waiting.

Today, Amy runs Lip Lock Aesthetics and Lip Lock Aesthetics Training Academy out of Liverpool. She recently taught her very first yoga class to three people at 6am.

Your dad picked accountancy for you. You had no plan when you left school. How did you go from that to running your own aesthetics business?

AMY: I went to school until year 10, and then I just stopped going. I had endometriosis, and I played on it massively. Don't get me wrong, I was in pain during my periods, but I did call in sick when I could've gone if I'd wanted to. It got to the point where my mum changed the contact number on the system to her own. The school was texting her every day, saying, 'Do you know your child's not in school today?' And she'd just text back, 'Yeah, I'm aware, thank you.'

Then I didn't want to go to sixth form. I ended up going to college purely because my brother went there, and I knew it was easy to get the bus. I made one friend, she was on different courses, so I switched with her. That's how much I didn't know what I wanted. And then I came home one day and said to my mum, ‘I don't have a clue what to do.’ My dad was old school. In his eyes, you'd either become an accountant or a solicitor. So he wrote a letter to the council and got me an apprenticeship. I didn't even pick that. My dad chose for me to be an accountant.

So how did aesthetics come into it?

AMY: So I had a friend who left the council to start doing aesthetics. This was ten or eleven years ago, so not many people were doing it. Her twin sister was my best friend, and I remember her saying to me, ‘Oh my God, she's smashing it, why don't you do it?’ 

I remember we went to Zara, and my friend just took five hundred pounds out of her purse and bought this big, long black coat and some other bits. And I was like, ‘That's half my wage. How are you doing that?’ I was like, ‘What am I doing with my life? I hate my job.’ We used to go to the kitchen every single day just to escape; we’d have a shot of coffee. I was bored out of my head. So I finally decided to enrol. I had the coursework, but it just sat there in my bedroom. ‘I'll do it when I can be bothered,’ was what I thought.

Eventually, I left the council and stayed at my ex-boyfriend's RAF base in Oxford for a week. That was when I got around to completing the whole thing.

You were working at the council when you got your MS diagnosis. What actually happened?

AMY: I went to the toilet at work. I was just in the mirror messing with my hair, and I threw it over to put it in a bobble, and all my legs went numb. I thought, ‘That didn't feel right. I've never felt that before.’ But I thought, ‘Maybe I was just a bit rough on the head flick.’

So I went and asked a woman I worked with. I was like, ‘Do you ever go numb on your legs when you flip your head forward?’ And she went, ‘No love.’ So I just parked it. Then I kept having it. It wasn't going even when I was sitting in bed. I went to the doctors, and I said, ‘I think I've got MS’. And the doctor laughed at me, as if I were being dramatic.

I got an MRI scan, and yeah, I had loads of scar tissue on my brain, loads of lesions, and on the C spine. They diagnosed me with a clinically isolated syndrome. A couple of weeks later, I lost sight in my right eye. And they were like, ‘Right, yeah. It's MS. You need two relapses for it to be a diagnosis.

Once you qualified as an aesthetician, you went straight out on your own. Some people try a clinic first; they go and work for someone. You never even considered it.

AMY: I was absolutely traumatised from working for someone. I swore blind I'd never work for anyone ever again. Even now with yoga, people say, ‘I've got a studio, come and do a class, I'll put you on the backup list.’ And I'm like, ‘No. I don't want to be on your schedule. Respectfully.’

When you work for someone, you're quite vulnerable. You're literally in their hands. You have to do what they say. If they have a bad day and want to biff you off, they pretty much can if they've got enough clout in the business. Do you know what I mean?

Once you were on your own, what was actually pushing you to make it work?

AMY: Honestly? Because I had to. If someone had turned round to me when I was 23, 24 and said, ‘Just do the bare minimum, it's all covered,’ I probably would've. But that's not what happened. I had no choice but to provide. I had Delilah. I knew the potential my business had to make money. It just meant I had to step outside my comfort zone to go and get it.

And does the mindset work? Where did that come in?

AMY: That came from a really dark place. I didn't wake up one morning feeling super motivated, thinking, ‘Great, I'll go and do a money consciousness masterclass.’ It was like, ‘I can't get out of bed because I feel that shit. I can't play with my daughter because I'm that depressed. I've got no joy inside me. I just felt like an empty vessel. Completely empty.’

So I went back to the mindset to work properly. And when you start doing that, it directly impacts your business. Because when you lift the ceiling on what you're telling yourself, you apply it to everything. That level of belief in yourself, that level of respect for yourself, automatically transcends into every aspect of your life. Including your business.

What does that actually look like when you're in it?

AMY: Your thoughts influence your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your daily routine. Your daily routine becomes your weekly, and so on. So instead of being overwhelmed with the five-year view, it was: ‘Where am I now? What am I thinking right now? Is this thought serving me?’

I'd wake up and go, ‘I’ve got to check my bank, I won't have enough money, I've got this bill.’ And I'd ask, is that serving me? Or can I capture myself right now and turn it into something different? ‘I'm really grateful I've got flowing water through my house. I'm grateful I've got a daughter who needs my love. I'm grateful I've got a clinic that's going to take four hours of my day because I'm busy and I'm thriving.’

I heard something once, I think it was a post on Instagram, and this man said: ‘You have got to aggressively take control of your mindset. You've got to choose differently. It doesn't just flow in and flow out. If you're in a negative thought process, you need to really aggressively call yourself out of that, because it's just going to become your life on a great scale.’

Then meditation. Not a big formal thing. It could just be sitting there, focusing on a single dot on the wall for ten minutes. Putting my shoulders back and taking some breaths in the stillness. Finding out what I actually need without being told or influenced by anyone else.

You launched a training academy, took £5,000 in deposits, and then refunded everyone. Most people would've just quietly moved on. You relaunched.

AMY: I got so much going on in my own head. I hadn't got the online platform set up. I didn't want to be marking exams, printing stuff off and posting manuals, and I just got overwhelmed. I thought, just forget it. Don't even do it. It's too much.

And then I just figured it out. I thought there was no need to overthink this. The platform was easy to sort. I could've done it straight away if I'd just got on with it. I just thought, do it. Do it. Time's going to pass anyway. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Your branding is instantly recognisable. But that orange wasn't always something you wanted people to see.

AMY: My hair when I was a kid was bright orange. I mean bright. And I remember walking to school with my dad when a little boy shouted to his mum, “Oh my God, look at that girl with the orange hair.” I didn't even look up. I died on the inside. I was only about six or seven. He didn't mean it nastily. He just hadn't seen it before.

So as soon as I was old enough, I dyed it dark brown. Then blonde. And then when I had Delilah, I couldn't keep on top of the roots, so I went back to copper. And I just thought, right. Let's embrace it. I rebranded around it. Your branding represents you. It needs to be recognisable. And with a daughter to think about, it's important that she see me in my power. Not see me hiding my naturalness.

Now I don't even tint my eyebrows. They're copper. I just don't hide it.

The thing that used to make me want to disappear is now what makes you stop scrolling on Instagram. You don't even have to read the caption to know it's Amy. You just know. 

You started doing yoga because of the MS diagnosis. Years later, it's become part of your business. How did that happen?

AMY: I was looking for ways to holistically calm the nervous system. I didn't want to take things like amitriptyline or gabapentin. I have immunosuppressant injections every four weeks, but I don't take anything that sedates me or affects the nerves. I regulate holistically.

And I noticed how I was responding to things. I used to react to everyone and everything, way over the top. Yoga was part of building a toolbox. Things that would help me regulate my emotions, my nervous system, and keep the body moving. With MS, I've lost feeling in my hands for two weeks, lost feeling in my feet, lost my sight in one eye. It's debilitating. So when you do yoga, you're being mindful and appreciative of all areas of the body. That's how it started. Nothing to do with aesthetics.

Some people look at me and go, ‘She does aesthetics, why is she doing yoga?’ But that's only a reflection of their own limiting beliefs. They probably feel boxed in themselves.

If you want to be an aesthetics trainer and a yoga teacher, go and do it. If you want to play tennis and be a ballet dancer, go and do it. If you want to be a writer and a burlesque dancer on a Saturday, go and do it. Just be all of it. Explore all the parts of it.

You stop living as soon as you put yourself in a box. As soon as you tell yourself the story of I am this, or this is me, you close down all the opportunities for life to actually bring in what's for you. You really do.

You talk about the universe gifting you an idea, and if you don't take it, handing it to someone else. Is that really how you make decisions now?

Photo: Amy Ryan

AMY: I had a coach once, and she told me about her new podcast. I was triggered massively. I thought, ‘She's taken my idea.’ And I said to her, ‘Look, I feel like you've basically nicked my idea. Why would you do that?’ And she just looked at me and said, ‘Amy. Why haven't you done your podcast?’

And I was sitting there thinking, I've just completely projected. She wasn't even talking about the same stuff. We just had similar interests. But she was right. That was the medicine I needed.

So now when I have an idea, I've got the fear of God in me. I have this thought, I want to be a yoga teacher. That's it. I'm going to be a yoga teacher. If I don't, someone else will do it, and then I'll have to watch them.

I was dead nervous the night before my first yoga class. Overthinking everything. And then I just thought, ‘You know what, Amy? This is fun.’ That's how you know it's right for you. When the nerves feel like fun.

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Shannon Kate Murray, Founder & Editor of High Flying Design
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