We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexis Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alexis, appreciate you joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers

I think the craziest business story I’ve had is the story of what led me to finally become an entrepreneur. I started working in a spa and doing eyelash extensions when i was 17, the spa i worked at was commission based and for me at 17 having no bills or responsibly making $16 a hour in 2017 was amazing lol. I loved the spa and i loved the clients and the owner everything was amazing. The owner of the spa decided to branch out and get a bigger building and it started out great i was very happy to be included. Also let me mention that i was the most popular lash artist at the facility at the time. After closing she decided to assign rooms, most rooms had two girls or so in a room but she decided to pull me to the side and told me that she wanted to give me my own room because she thought it would be great for me and the business since i was so busy. I declined the offer and i told her “i love it here but eventually i will want to branch out in my career and work for myself” and from that day forward nothing was the same. She didn’t talk to me nor treat me the same. My clients were not allowed to request me personally for services anymore. I wasn’t personally allowed to talk to clients anymore. It was weird but at 17/18 i could put two and two together on what was really happening . That went on for months and one day it got really bad, my coworkers were not longer allowed to talk to me during work hours so finally i spoke up about it and all hell broke loose. During those moments she was very rude and careless to me. My godmother is a pastor so i called her to talk to her about the situation and i told her i wanted to put in my two weeks notice, her exact words were “sometimes when God wants you to move he will put you in such a uncomfortable position you will have to move, it’s time to move” . So that night i finished my clients and i let everyone know i wouldn’t be returning and i haven’t looked back since.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi everyone, My name is Alexis Smith and i am the owner of Dollhouse Beauty. I am an Esthetician. I started selling strip lashes at the age of 16 years old and that is what started my journey in the beauty industry. My lane within esthetics is corrective skincare. I think that is what sets me apart. I love to do facials but my main goal is to make visible differences within skincare. I think the main thing I’m proud of within my business is my ability to keep going. It’s definitely a constantly changing industry so my ability to continue to figure it out and push through is what makes me the most proud. I think the things I’d like my potential clients to know about me is Dollhouse Beauty is a experience, i genuinely care about everyone who enters my doors whether you spend $1 or $100, picking me as your service provider is a choice and i make sure my clients know how grateful i am, my heart is truly in it.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think the main thing that honestly helped me build my reputation is word of mouth. Lol many people see that as old school and use social media as the only tool but it is so much bigger than that and people tend to forget . Like i said before i let everyone who walks through my doors know how grateful I am for them. When you get serviced from me or purchase anything from me you’re getting an experience with it. You’ll never feel like another number or like I’m just in it for the money because I’m going to display how much i care though the work ethic i have .

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think one of the biggest lessons i had to learn was family/ friends will most likely not be your clientele. When i started my business i reached out to my family and friends first thinking that they would support and i was definitely in for a ride awakening. 80% of my family has never been serviced by me but they got to other people to receive the same service I’m offering. I used to take it’s so personal and it used to hurt my feelings because i could my understand for the life of me why they wouldn’t support me. And half of the times when they did support me they wanted it for free or for a discount. It took awhile for me to fully understand that they were never my target audience anyway.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @Dollhousebeautyskin @_lexniccole
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@lifewithlex_