We recently connected with Brooke Jones and have shared our conversation below.

Brooke , appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

At the beginning of any business, if you are truely a ‘hustler’ at heart, your main objective is to earn some money. Big money, little money, any money, doesn’t matter. The objective every morning is ‘how can I actually produce dollars from this ‘idea’? To take it a step back, before I opened my salons, I wrote down at least 50 moves I could make in order to see my business become a success. I checked off everything on the list within a years time, and I wasn’t taking no for an answer. Failure was not an option.
Fast forward, I get to a place where, I can finally pay ALL of my bills. (Inserts laugh emoji while sighing and remembering the good ole days were the lights wouldn’t cut on). As a new adult, it is easy to plateau here at this level. Why? Well, you are excited that you can afford yourself. You can attend every function, take trips, maybe even splure a little on some designer things, etc. What more could you want? Right?
Wrong, this is where is having systems in place to assess monitary growth are important. You have to remember, the business expanding is still the ongoing objective.
Every few months, I like to have an ‘imagination session’. This is where I am visualizing where I am, where I want to be, and all of the different ways I can get there. Write down every thought without judgement. Good ideas and bad. This breeds creativity, and creativity leans on instincts, and instincts often propel you to new levels.

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

So I go by the trap alias Brooklyndidit it. I got my official start in music in a duo girl group with my sister. As a starving artist, a lot of times I was left to do my hair and make up myself. Eventually people started to call us to help them with their hair and make up as well. I guess you could say it’s stuck. I currently operate two salons and provide natural hair services. I manage my clothing boutique Vulgurrr Apparel. I am also a part of an awesome podcast called Two B’s in a Pod, which airs every Monday at 1pm on hits 92.3.
I am most proud of my ability to build things from scratch. My businesses are my babies and mean everything to me. My customers and clients are the flesh of my businesses, so it is a priority for me to treat everyone like family. I believe this attributes largely to my success.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

In the beginning we were strapped for cash. So we had to put our brains together to come up with every low-cost marketing strategy. For example, we would volunteer every third weekend of the month to do little girls hair for free. This actually landed our salon in the local newspaper, which boosted our popularity tremendously. We asked every close friend and family member to pass out flyers at every busy shopping center in the city. We would sit for hours and Instagram stock people’s DM‘s with specials. I could go on and on about every attempted marketing strategy. I think the most important part is to schedule to attack and remain consistent even when you don’t see results.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

After being fired from our jobs, we took our last two checks and bought as many materials as we could to renovate our new salon space. Our husbands at the time we’re up-and-coming barbers and we’re already holding down the fort at home. They still contributed what additional funds they had in order to make the Salon SOS dream come true. We found the best furniture the thrift store and Facebook marketplace had to offer. We painted ourselves. Our husbands mounted their “asses off”. We did enough to open doors and generate some cash flow. At the end of each week we were able to purchase a little bit mo’.

Contact Info:

• Website: Linktr.ee/brooklyndidit
• Instagram: @iambrooklyndidit
• Other: Salonsos.shop

Image Credits
Victor ‘VS1 Atl’ Sanchez