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

Betsy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think it takes to be successful?

To be truly successful in any career that you choose is to make sure that you found happiness. I found my happiness as a business owner years ago, inviting people to join me in the culture that I’ve created. Being artistic and having skills is one thing, but how you treat your community and how you make individuals feel is everything in this career. I learned a long time ago and never pays to be a Lonewolf. To have a team of people who are like-minded and driven for success and driven to help people is what makes you successful. And then that comes happiness.

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?

I got into the hair industry about 20 years ago because I wanted a job with freedom. Freedom to Xpress myself freedom to create art every day. And then the unexpected side effect of wanting this career was the impact that you make on individuals. I’ve owned a hair salon for nearly a decade was an amazing group of people, and I have recently ventured out and Co. owned a record and skateboard shop for the local Orange Park area. to make sure that people have a place that they can come into and feel the creativity and feel invited and feel inspired to create amazing art themselves. Being a female business owner it’s always a struggle because everyone thinks a man owns some thing that you’ve put your life’s work into you. Explain to them a woman did this. It feels great.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I started out in the salon, Business as a little hole in the wall 700 square-foot studio. Every day I marketed every day I still market to create an artistic showcase for our work in the salon, and as our work in the music store as well. It has a small business with not a lot of space. We created a giant, following almost a cult, like following, which has been very fun to witness and really nice to enjoy.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest thing I had to unlearn is that I couldn’t be 100% at everything I did. If I was 100% all in as a business owner I would be lagging as a mother and a wife. And if I was 100% a mother and a wife I wouldn’t be the best business owner I could be. Balance balance with some thing I had to learn and teach myself to make sure even though I’m trying to run successful businesses to truly be happy, I needed to make sure I took time off. I needed to make sure I set boundaries with clients. I needed to make sure that I had days that I could reset my brain .

Contact Info:

• Instagram: atomicbeautyandbarberlounge
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/904atomicbeautyandbarberlounge?mibextid=LQQJ4d