We recently connected with Alley Gage and have shared our conversation below.
Alley , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?
Impeccable quality and service is essential to my business. While I absolutely believe everyone should be pampering themselves and taking care of their skin, I have a very realistic view on my business and the services I offer. Make up is a luxury service that people typically utilize for occasions and special events; it’s not a the most reliable stream of consistent revenue. Facials are also a luxury service and when people need to cut costs out of their monthly budget, it can be viewed as a non-essential (let’s be real, it’s not your car insurance or your mortgage). With that being said, if someone is going to fight to keep facials in the budget, or indulge in getting their make up done, the quality of the service needs to be immaculate, it needs to be consistently amazing, and they need to feel like it is well worth the money they’ve spent.
I’ve managed to maintain my quality through my growth by not living a “more, more, more” mentality. In my industry, your revenue is determined by your time; the more people you see or squeeze into a work day, the more money you can make, but I’ve learned that it absolutely has the potential to derail your quality of service. When I first started my business, I didn’t start with a full clientele and I was really working to build up my client base. This meant that I had more flexible time in between clients and I could spend more intentional time with each of my clients to discuss their service, recommend products, curate a personalized routine, and answer every lingering question. As I grew, I started to try and schedule my services with less time in between people to maximize on the people I could see in a day. This did not stand to benefit me and when I dug into my business analytics, I realized while I was seeing more people in a day, I wasn’t necessarily bringing in more money. I was working so much harder, feeling rushed to my services, and not feeling fully focused on the individual that I was working with.
I readjusted, started to give my self more cushion between people, and got really honest with myself about how long I wanted to spend with each person. Initially, it almost felt self-indulgent to take the additional time with each client, but my numbers and business reviews both reflect that giving people the time and attention, not just in a service, but prior to service with great consulting, after their service with answering the questions and really making sure I am sending people out the door with confidence, was worth every minute spent with my clients. They spend more, they trust more, they refer business and it has built a really strong rapport.
My advice about quality and service as businesses grow is that we live in a setting that’s face paced and we want everything faster, but faster isn’t always better. Faster means things get forgotten, compromised, and corners get cut.. In the long run, this can really leave a bad impression and a sense that things have gone down hill as a company has grown. Nothing is more disappointing as a consumer then when you love a business or an experience, you give that organization your money and your business because you want to see it grow and succeed, only for it to develop into a place where the service or product isn’t what is used to be. In partnership to that, the beauty of being a small business owner is that I am in full control of how I delegate my time and how I make things special for my clients. I am not trying to hustle people through as fast as I can. I want people to feel seen, noticed, and like every penny they’re spending is valued. It’s worth it to me to go above in beyond in the experience to make my studio a place they want to come back too. I go in an hour before any service I have to prep my studio, I deep clean, mop floors, start an oil diffuser so my studio smells inviting, I read through all of my client notes on my clients that day, so, I am fully prepared for their service and I am going in with a customized plan. I try to do everything that’s needed before my clients even have to ask. I do all of those things consistently and as I have grown and my time has become more valuable, those are corners I could’ve cut, but if someone is coming in for a service that, like I said in the beginning, is non-essential and a luxury, it needs to be out of this world luxurious and out of this world special. The quality and client service needs to be so outstanding that they are always coming back for more.
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’m Alley Gage and I’m from Kansas City and I specialize in event make up, skincare and facials, and sharpening personalized make up skills. I’ve had an interest in make up and beauty all of my life. My love of beauty started from the women in my family. I come from a long line of cattle ranchers in rural Nebraska and all of the women in my family, even though they lived in the sticks ranching cows, were the most glamorous women. They wore perfume every day, teased their hair, and always put an extra swipe of lipstick on before they did anything. They instilled in me that there doesn’t have to be an occasion to dress up for to beautify yourself. The normal everyday is a good enough reason to put yourself together, to take care of yourself, and to pamper yourself everyday.
What really solidified this was the career for me was during my high school experience, I was incredibly bullied. It was brutal and I didn’t have any friends, but while other people were out on the weekends, I was at home, digging through magazines and emulating make up looks I saw with the products I had. In the process of that, I became very empowered and enamored with how the act of creating something beautiful made me feel armored, indestructible, and gave me a renewed sense of confidence. To me, it was pure magic that a smokey eye or a red lip could transform someone in that way, but I wanted to be able to impart and give that gift to other people and I’ve continued to make that my life’s work.
The love of creating that feeling with make up ended up bringing me to my love of skincare and beautifying skin. In the early years of my artistry, I quickly realized working with clients that if the skin doesn’t look good, the make up won’t look good. Amazing skin is the foundation for beautiful artistry. I lived this first hand when I turned 23. I unexpectedly developed severe hormonal acne. I was aware of how devastating acne and skin issues could be to a persons confidence, but experiencing the suffering and the struggle first hand was eye opening. I tried TONS of products, went to countless doctors and dermatologists, tried medication, and after a very frustrating and expensive trial and error process, I finally made my way back to beautiful, clear skin.
What sets me and my business apart is that I am equally as well versed and experienced in both realms and I am equally as passionate about both. The skincare side is more scientific; more black and white, while the make up side of my business is where I get to release my creativity. I perform high-end event make up services, I teach private make up lessons, I work with clients to freshen up their make up routine, learn new techniques and skills, and recommend the right products. On the skincare side of my business, I treat a variety of concerns, but I have a tremendous passion for treating acne, driving lasting, long-term results, and giving people their dream skin.
What sets me apart is the beauty industry as a whole is very overwhelming and oversaturated with both products and information. I love being a light in the dark and the person to clear the noise. I have no interest in lining my pockets by overselling or overcomplicating. I am very honest and forthcoming on my opinions and when it comes to sharing my expertise, but feeling beautiful should feel attainable, achievable, and people can absolutely get the look or skin of their dreams when they are armed with the right knowledge, products, and treatments.
I am most proud of what my business stands for and the risk I took to build it. Before I started my business, I was working for a local med spa and I was constantly at odds with the owner. She was angry with me because I wouldn’t sell products I didn’t believe in or push treatments on my clients that I knew weren’t right for them. I reached a breaking point and I knew I had to leave because I wasn’t willing to compromise my integrity or my word to make a few extra dollars. I decided to quit and start a business without a full clientele, which was risky, but I wanted to do things on my own terms, with brands and products I trusted, without the fear of punishment for being transparent with clients. I reached out to the most trusted skincare brand that I had built a great relationship with over the course of my career and they agreed to make me their first solo esthetics partner.
The stars aligned for me to create a business that really honors what I believe. What I want people to know about me as a person and business owner is that people are at the heart of everything I do. My aim is to make each person feel like they are the star of the show. I want each client to leave feeling a renewed sense of confidence, to feel as magical on the outside as they are on the inside, and to feel empowered to put their best face forward.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson I have had to unlearn is that the beauty industry doesn’t need to understand financial literacy and business analytics. Let me preface by saying, I have dyscalculia and I really struggle when it comes to the numbers. I thought that choosing a creative profession would set me free from every having to deal with math, but if you want to run a business successfully; creative or otherwise, the numbers have to be there to help you get a pulse and read your business.
When I was trying to figure out the timing of services, time needed in between clients to sanitize, clean, answer client questions, sell retail, and reset my studio, while building clientele, I originally, started having lots of cushion. As this grew, I started to feel the need to cut the cushion timing down because I figured the more people I could squeeze in, the more money I would make. Wrong. Retail makes up for almost a third of my business. When I was rushed in between clients and that time became compromised, my retail sales dropped substantially and my average ticket price dropped because I didn’t have the time to explain the product or why the product needed to be a part of my clients at home routine. Clients need the “why” and when I was unable to provide it because I was trying to fit more people in, instead of gaining in revenue for more people in for services, I was stagnant. More people wasn’t necessarily making me more money and my numbers proved that time spent intentionally is money made without working harder.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I, like so many, was radically impacted by COVID-19. I had been working for a notable beauty company since the time I was 18. I started as an employee in Kansas, moved to LA when I was 20, got promoted to a Senior Artist, started training artists and opening new stores across the LA area, started filming make up artistry and skincare content for their YouTube channel and social media, decided to move back to Kansas City, but continued to return to LA for almost a week every month to continue filming content, landed an international make up campaign, and was still training artistry amongst my five stores in Kansas City. I loved my career. I felt like I had the best of both worlds; getting to live in Kansas City and train artistry, but also getting to go back to LA to create content, It was a dream, but COVID put it all to an end. I went from touching peoples faces nonstop for eight plus hours a day for almost ten years to not being allowed to do any make up, traveling between stores and teaching to being stuck on a cash register doing returns, filming in LA once a month and making elevated content to stocking lipsticks and dusting off shelfs each day. It was very challenging to feel like I had completely reverted back to where I was as a new employee. Everything I had worked for, all of the risks I took, all of the recognition I had gained was just over. I really struggled for a while coming out of the pandemic because as life started to resume, my career did not.
It was ultimately decided after restructuring and adjusting the business to meets the needs of a post-pandemic world that my position was being dissolved. Education and artistry were no longer a focus; selling became the priority. And while I did still have a job, I ultimately was doing the work of several people that had not been replaced and would not be replaced since COVID layoffs and I was doing a lot of additional work for no more money. I spent a lot of days restocking a specific shelf of lip stains thinking “Is this all I’m good for now? I am am more valuable then this. I can do more then this and I am stuck here.” I knew I needed to take a next step, but it felt very unsteady to try to find different work while coming out of the pandemic. The breaking point after all of this is when annual raises were discussed and I got a .26 cent raise. I was told that was lucky, that a lot of people didn’t get raises at all, and that I was so valued by the company. 26 cents doesn’t make a person feel valuable and it was my breaking point. I decided to leave an organization I’d spent so much of my career at, to start over, to go work for a small med spa (which was a COMPLETE change of pace) and figure out my next move. This pivot lead me to realizing that I still loved doing facials, I loved the peace of one-on-one interactions, and that I was really great at making people feel pampered. It got my wheels turning and I started to think about how I could marry the two worlds of skincare and make up together in a business model that made sense and allowed me to do both elements of what I love. After manifesting and thinking about it so long, when I reached a point that I was ready to leave that job, I knew what my next step was and I was ready to build a business for myself.
Contact Info:
- Website: alleygagebeauty.com
- Instagram: @alleygage @alleygagebeauty
- Facebook: Alley Gage Beauty
- Linkedin: Alley Gage
- Other: Google: Alley Gage Beauty TikTok: alleygage1
Image Credits
Morgan Glocker Photography Co.