The tell is exactly what you described: neutralising skin sends everything else magenta. That is a spectral mismatch, not a white balance error. Also check whether there are two different sources in the room — LED panels plus daylight through a window gives the same symptom and is much easier to fix by closing a blind.
This works brilliantly for some people and paralyses others. Worth trying for a few walks to find out which you are.
Also completely normal to get worse before better while your brain reorganises how it accesses things. I had a two week stretch where I could not conjugate anything correctly right after a big listening push.
Size and distance matter more than the fixture. A smaller, harder source further away gives you fall-off across the face and reads as three dimensional. A big soft source right in the subject's face erases every contour on it.
Tape your kit zoom at 35 for two weeks. Sounds silly, works perfectly, costs nothing. Then check the metadata on your last 500 frames and see where you actually shoot.
The prime, and the reason is not image quality. A fixed focal length makes you move, and moving is the entire skill in street photography. With a zoom you stand still and frame. With a 35 you step closer or find another angle, and the pictures get better because you end up in the scene rather than observing it from across the road. Weight matters more than people admit too — the camera you carry beats the one that is optically better and left at home.
Also check your viewing habits. 100 percent on a 27 inch monitor is looking at a print about a metre wide from 40 centimetres away. Almost nothing is sharp at that magnification, and photographers torture themselves over softness nobody will ever see. Zoom to fit and ask whether it is sharp at the size it will actually be viewed.
Lifting shadows also drains saturation from skin. A small saturation boost inside the same mask is usually what sells it.
Four months in I do not have many past clients to tell.
For product close-ups specifically the bounce wins — you often want a big soft wrap and a card is more controllable than another fixture. So it depends which half of your work matters more to you.