We were lucky to catch up with Cathy Swanson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Cathy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

Some of the main steps that allowed me to launch my business? The first was deciding to work for myself, making the decision to open a salon. The second was promising to work as hard for myself as I had at every job I ever had. Also, I was backed by some amazing business women, sometimes when you’re ready to advance you can’t do it alone, you need support from yourself, and your core group of supportive people, then you need people who will help you turn dreams, into goals and launch times. Samantha Toth and her team at Innerreactive Media, helped me narrow down my idea and really started turning my dream into a reality by developing a mood board and website concept and turn my thoughts into tangible objects.

Jean Fero from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Grand Valley State University helped me groom my business plan into perfection and gather all of the data I needed to give my salon short and long term goals on paper which would help guide it for years even after I’m gone, Jean has sense retired but those one hour a week visits in her office turned a big dream into small steps, (which is were I am weakest)into a reality. Before I started anything I did a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses and outside threats) analysis Knowing my weaknesses allowed me to Aline myself with people who were strong in those areas. I can give you a huge idea (the artist in me) but the small steps in between concept and materialization are not my strong suit, creating a website, graphics aren’t my wheelhouse I Met Samantha and Jean they took my ideas put them together and helped develop Blushing Goddess Salon

Cathy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Most people don’t know that before I became a hairstylist, then a salon owner, I was actually on the medical school track. It wasn’t until my 3rd year I realized I was very unhappy in what I was doing and I was in it for the wrong reasons. I was in med school because I am a grand child of immigrants from Sweden and they came here to give our family a better life, but no one ever told me what that was suppose to look like! Was it success, money, education or a big house on the hill with no worries?

After some serious soul-searching I decided I wanted to follow my hearts desires and do what made me happy which was becoming a Hairstylist. I enjoy interacting with people every day and it gives me instant gratification daily when I’m able to give a person back the sense of self that they’ve lost because of all the demands in their life.

My goal is a Hairstylist was always to bring a person in and have them leave all labels at the door and allow them to just focus on their selves. That refresh sometimes is all a person needs to be able to go back out and conquer the world for another 4 to 6 weeks.

I wanted to pair that with my skill and ability to offer hair care services to anyone regardless of their hair type or texture. Because no one should ever walk into a salon and not be able to be provided services regardless of their hair. Now, don’t get me wrong, if there’s an issue that goes beyond my scope of capability I will get them referred to the correct person. However, It is my true belief that all hairstylist should be able to provide hair care to anyone curly, straight, coils, kinky, fine, thin, heavy or mixed hair patterns. Great hair should happen for everyone.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Many times when you start out as a hairstylist, you are told the “three R’s” are the most important thing, rebook, retail, and referral, no one is to leave your salon without doing those three things. But no ever told me how to get clients in my chair to begin with.

So I took it upon myself to get very creative and promoting myself as a stylist, I utilize my local Grand Rapid Public Library Business Center and got busy created flyers, then printing them and went around to local businesses, banks, restaurant and schools dropping them off. Then I connected with a realtor in the downtown area and created a welcome packet for new home buyers moving to the area,

I also started volunteering in my community for back to school haircuts. I would have to say though the biggest key was putting my card in the hands of anybody I interacted with, if I met them at a networking function, the grocery store, at restaurants I would leave my business card for the waitress along with the tip.

I once went to the banks drive-through and the teller mentioned she had several of my cards to give back to me she handed me back about 50 cards that I had dropped off of the past few months. After retrieving them I took four cards out and put them back in the tube, sent them back into the bank.Telling myself that one day someone from the bank would come in to get their hair done. Needless to say, my hard work paid off because I gain one of my longest standing clients from that now brings her entire family to me to get their hair done.

So ultimately I build my clientele through the willingness to put myself out there, not be afraid to meet a stranger. I always have my business card in hand but just in case I should ever forget them at home I had an electronic version my business card created, so I am able to send it right to somebody’s phone which will upload all my contact information with a QR code on it that leads them directly to my website!

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

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn was just because someone has more years of experience in your industry than you or have a higher education level it does not mean that they know how to do something better than or are smarter than you.

When I first started out in the industry I cut hair differently than the person I worked for, while in the middle of the haircut one day she screamed across the salon at me, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING????, THAT IS NOT HOW YOU CUT HAIR!!!!!” in that moment I could’ve melted into the floor, I was only a few months out from graduation, I had just started working there, she had years of experience over me, as did all the other stylist, also she just did it IN FRONT of the guest in my chair. In that moment I lost every ounce of confidence I had as a stylist in for the next three years I question every thing I did every single day.

It wasn’t until I went to a hair show and the late great Martin Parsons told me “ just because someone has years of experience over you, does not mean that they know how to do things the right way, this field is always evolving each and every day and what one person learns today will be old news the next..my dear”

I went back to the salon after that encounter with a new found sense of confidence and I began my journey to open my own salon, I realized at that hair show in that moment it was time for me to move on. That started the year long process of taking baby steps to create Blushing Goddess Salon.

In closing, To whomever is reading this please make sure to invest, work and believe in yourself it will truly be worth it, life is to short and only loaned to us for a little while for you to be unhappy, we spend 40 plus hours a week trading time for money..you shouldn’t just like it you should love it. It won’t be easy but it will be worth it.

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Image Credits
Wild Times Photography