Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aja Freeman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Aja , thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I came up with the name because my business is literally me it’s everything that I love. I didn’t want to name it anything usual because I also didn’t want to limit what I chose to offer based off of the name. I love all things beauty and all things self care, when people come through the doors I am sharing a piece of myself with each of them I see myself splashed throughout the spa. The ambiance, the vibe, the services even the music being played, the candles being burned, the type of hand soap being used. I hand picked each item in there and I think of my business very much so as an extension of myself. The tag line- Beauty Begins Here, beauty begins with you, wherever you are, whatever it looks like and whatever it means to you!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I opened the doors to my business in February of 2016 just after my 20th birthday, at that time we were a teeth whitening franchise. About a year and 6 months into being open I decided to go to cosmetology school to become a licensed esthetician. Originally when I decided to get my esthetics license it was something I was doing to add on to my business just looking for ways to build on to what I already had. I had no prior knowledge about the beauty industry. I did however like personal care services like facials and massages so, I was interested and intrigued, but I didn’t know the intricacies of the industry whatsoever. I dropped out of University of Memphis where I was pursuing a nursing degree, but I wasn’t sure if that was where my heart was and now that I look back on it, I was desperately searching for my passion. I enrolled in cosmetology school July of 2017, and I graduated in January 2018, at the same time I decided to change the name of my business to “Aja’s” since we would be offering so much more than teeth whitening moving forward. I was a fully licensed esthetician by May of 2018. I slowly started implementing all the services and techniques that I had learned in school, I had to build and refine my services and prices, search for vendors and more. It was almost like I was opening a brand-new business all over again because now I had a broader market and I had to build that clientele up from scratch. I only had one treatment room for the esthetic services, and I continued to offer teeth whitening in the open space of my building. I worked hard to refine my techniques and be able to offer the best quality service and customer care that I possibly could. I’ve tried so many different wax and skin care brands looking for the highest quality for my clients, my philosophy is that if I don’t or wouldn’t use it on my own skin, I won’t use it on theirs. This led me to working on recipes for handmade and all natural skin care products for my clients to use at home. I worked by myself, six days a week for three years building my client base and majority of my clients come from word of mouth and referrals. When I first started in this industry, I could remember a Brazilian wax would take me upward of 30 minutes and now myself and my staff perform Brazilians anywhere from 7-10 minutes without skipping out on quality service and customer care. At the start of the pandemic (July 2020) I decided to take a leap of faith and have two additional treatment rooms constructed. I had made it to a point where I could only see so many people in a day and by books were starting to be filled consistently. I knew if I could create the extra space then I could get some extra hands and Aja’s would be able to see double the number of clients that I could see with only one room and just me. Fast forward to this year, business has only continued to grow, and I had to make the decision to construct one last treatment room (3 new rooms in all) and I no longer work by myself. I was able to bring in three other esthetician’s and we all get the pleasure of working alongside one another while we all get a chance to do something we truly love and have a passion for. We offer full body waxing, facials, teeth whitening, lash extensions, body treatments, chemical peels, all natural skin care products and more!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I know for a fact that making customer service and customer satisfaction our number one priority. We are known for having a quick yet efficient services with high quality customer care. We know that when you have a great quality service people are more likely to do your marketing for you a large majority of our clientele we get from word of mouth.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We sell all of our own products. on our own website. I find that this works best for our business model right now since we have a brick and mortar location while people are on our website to book services they can also purchase products and just the opposite. One of our main goals at this time is driving as much traffic to our website as possible. Eventually we do hope to start selling our products on other platforms so that we can reach a group of people that we would not normally reach and put our products in front of those they wouldn’t normally.

Contact Info:

• Website: beaautybeginshere3.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ajas_beautybeginshere/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beautyybeginshere
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrilyn-freeman-166b351ba/