We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alyssa Gorlitz and Mike Boutsikaris. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alyssa Gorlitz and Mike Boutsikaris below.

Alyssa Gorlitz and Mike Boutsikaris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

In 2020, we purchased a very well known brand, “Total Tan Sun Salon”, from someone who grew to become a family friend. He spent nearly 3 decades in the industry and was able to rise to the top 5% in the industry nationwide, with 1 brick and mortar location. Our vision for our brand was to carry on our friend’s legacy while expanding our footprint to more communities across Metro-Detroit Michigan. What sets us apart from anyone else in the industry, is that we lead with customer service and cleanliness, in an upscale, relaxed salon environment. We offer state of the art equipment with the latest technology available such as units that produce UV light by LED. We have found a way to embrace all of the change in technology and use it in a way which benefits our clients and our business. We are honored that we have been able to build a team of young adults that enjoy working for us and can envision working with us long-term, as their career. We whole heartedly believe in reinvesting back into our business to offer our clients the highest level of service in a rustic beach-inspired ambiance, where the charm of weathered textures marries the laid-back allure of coastal relaxation.

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?

We whole heartedly believe in the therapeutic benefits you can receive from sunlight, including indoor tanning. We have both enjoyed these benefits our entire lives. There is just something about a bright, blue sky, Michigan summer day that feels so good, much like hopping into a tanning bed after too many grey, winter days in a row in Michigan.

Over the years, we came to be family friend’s with the owner of our favorite tanning salon, Total Tan Sun Salon in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. One winter day in 2019, we struck up a conversation about the possibility of owning that salon and the rest is history.

In 2020, prior to and in the midst of Covid, we purchased “Total Tan Sun Salon”, from someone who grew to become a a very dear friend. He had spent nearly 3 decades in the industry and was able to rise to the top 5% in the industry nationwide, with 1 brick and mortar location. Our vision for our brand was to carry on our friend’s legacy while expanding our footprint to more communities across Metro-Detroit Michigan. What sets us apart from anyone else in the industry, is that we lead with customer service and cleanliness, in an upscale, relaxed salon environment. We offer state of the art equipment with the latest technology available such as units that produce UV light by LED. We have found a way to embrace all of the change in technology and use it in a way which benefits our clients and our business. We are honored that we have been able to build a team of young adults that enjoy working for us and can envision working with us long-term, as their career. We are committed to reinvesting back into our business to offer our clients the highest level of service in a rustic beach-inspired ambiance, where the charm of weathered textures marries the laid-back allure of coastal relaxation.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

One of the biggest motivators of being small business owners has been to foster a culture that values and gives opportunity to their employees. We have both worked in careers in the past where we had found ourselves in positions in high stress environments where we were not appreciated and that is no way to live your life. When we purchased our 1st salon, the previous owner had a micro-management type of managerial style. He liked to do things his way because that is what had worked for him and struggled with relinquishing control. The employees we retained in the acquisition all worked in only “assistant” type of roles, helping with general cleaning tasks for the salon. Immediately upon taking over the salon, we noticed one of these employees in particular had an incredible work ethic and a drive to succeed. We approached this employee about the strengths we noticed in her and began to work with her to build her confidence to move her into a client service representative role and she excelled phenomenally in that role.

One of the biggest strengths we believe you can have as a business owner is recognizing your employees strengths and putting them in positions that complement those qualities. You can never be too removed from the business to remember what it is like to be an employee and in that, we never ask our employees to do something that either of us would not do. Additionally, we have a regular review schedule for all of our staff and incentivize their growth. On the flip side of that, we also have a structured discipline policy that is designed to help people learn from their mistakes or shortcomings. We also host team building activities throughout the year such as a corn maze and pumpkin picking in the fall and a holiday party in the winter.

How’d you meet your business partner?

We are actually husband and wife and we feel this is one of our strongest assets in business. We have always been very supportive of one another and each other’s dreams. Mike has been an entrepreneur from the day that we met. My background is in criminal justice and when we met I was a probation officer. I never had the desire to own my own business but albeit scared – was always supportive and intrigued by Mike’s determination to build businesses, from his small CAD design side hustle, to now owning a multi-location corporation. If he wasn’t working 70 hours a week towards building our business, he would have been putting those hours in somewhere else, for someone else and that just didn’t make sense. Our personalities have always complimented each other very well and I think that is why we excel in business together. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and let each other handle what we each are good at. There is no competition for who has the better idea etc. We feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to spend our days working alongside each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.totaltanwellness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/totaltanwellness?igsh=MW16M3lwejQ1bzg0Mg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TotalTanWellness?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/totaltanwellness/