We recently connected with Jessica Stokes and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

Erica and I had a vision to create a space for passionate, like-minded business owners to thrive in a team environment while maintaining and building their own brands. It was important to us to be able to carry the expenses of our business on our own in the beginning so that we would be able to grow organically and make decisions in the best interest of our team without the burden of relying on any of our staff for financial support. This decision allowed us the freedom to take our time in building the right team and gave us grace in the lessons we learned along the way when we needed to eliminate toxic team members. Studio Sage opened its doors with 3 contractors, including both myself and Erica. Within a few years we had grown our team to 17 contractors, including a half dozen up and coming stylists supporting and training in the salon.
Our first major lesson in owning a business came at this time: the importance of casting. while we were so focused on growing organically, we on-boarded everyone who felt like part of the “family” including stylists we considered friends.
We now recognize the importance of separating business and friendships after a dramatic couple of years.
It is so much harder to make the logical best decision for your team when you are influenced by personal emotions. It is also unreasonable to think friends won’t expect preferential treatment, even if subconsciously.
The second most important lesson we have learned along the way is to hire slow and fire fast.
The only thing that will ruin a great dynamic faster than a toxic person is the message sent by the leadership allowing it to go on too long.
All that being said, the casting process would be a failure without tapping into that emotional aspect that allows you to connect to a potential new hire. The balancing act of creating a team that is cohesive and without conflicting personalities is difficult but what I believe to be one of the most impactful efforts in building a successful business.
As we mark 7 years in business, we are entering a phase of expansion with a mindfulness for quality over quantity and for the lessons along the way that have brought us to this mindset I am grateful.

Jessica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Studio Sage is a collection of beauty professionals in Jacksonville Beach Florida specializing in not only commercial hair services but content creation for nationally and internationally recognized beauty brands. Our concept is the brain child of Erica Keelen and Jessica Stokes. Both hairstylists with over 20 years industry experience, our vision was to create the ideal space we wanted to work in combining the skills we had cultivated in a high end, fast paced salon with a more laid back environment that prioritized each stylist and their individual talents and aspirations. While our service providers thrive to create an indulgent space to beautify our guests day to day, we are also excited to harvest our passion for content creation and competition work. Our award-winning, collaborative team strives to maintain a level of professionalism and excellence in service while offering the latest and greatest techniques and products in our industry with a positive team environment that sets us apart.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Erica and I met as stylists in the salon we worked at prior to opening Sage. We began our journey together as two of five stylists in the beginning days of what would become a 24 station thriving salon. While we learned invaluable tools from the structure and mechanics necessary to maintain the machine the salon had become, we couldn’t ignore the feeling there had to be a way to achieve comparable success without such demand on the service providers. Social media was becoming more appealing to our industry as not only a marketing and networking tool, but also provided a creative outlet for content creation and competitive opportunities. As we ventured into our reimagined approach to customer service, we were able to incorporate both our love for making our guests feel beautiful day to day and our new found passion of creating hair art.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

While word of mouth will always be the best source of client referrals, Instagram has shown to be the best platform to drive new guests to our business. The platform offers multiple opportunities beneficial to many of our contractors in different ways. Our newer stylists looking to build a clientele are able to promote the services they want to attract by posting frequently and focusing on engagement while other stylists are able to utilize the platform as a portfolio of their work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.studiosagehair.com
• Instagram: @studiosagehair

Image Credits
Photography by Daryna Barykina and Sara Jane Maples