We recently connected with Emma Page and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Emma, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Tipping has been the standard practice in hair salons for what seems like forever. I mulled over the idea of doing away with tipping for about a year before I applied it in practice. My clients were shocked, and my peers were confused!

My goal as a service provider is to create a comfortable space and remove as much anxiety from the process of seeing a hairstylist as possible. Tipping is a huge point of discomfort for most people. Whether it’s because they don’t know the etiquette, aren’t comfortable with last-minute math, didn’t account for it in their budget, or feel like I’m going to judge them based on the dollar amount.

Getting rid of tipping as a practice has been wonderful for my business. Bookkeeping is much more simplified. Guests are more confident in their budgets and more comfortable at check out.

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 started my journey into the world of hair over a decade ago at the Aveda Institute Atlanta. I salon-hopped a few times early in my career, then settled into a lengthy stay (7 years) with one of the biggest names in the state. I found a passion for mentoring and sharing my knowledge with others during my time with them.

Eventually, I had bigger ideas than being an employee would ever allow, so I went independent. Today, I’m two years strong in my private studio space. I have flipped the business model of salons upside down in almost every way. I made clean beauty and ingredient awareness the #1 priority. I operate from a health-first perspective, always. I prioritized spending the extra money to implement green practices like recycling and reusable items wherever possible. You would not believe the amount of waste that hair salons produce!!

The one thing I never thought I would do: I stopped double-booking. I was a busy stylist who would double- and sometimes even triple-book, utilizing assistants and multiple chairs to service as many heads of hair at once as I could. A natural byproduct of moving locations, I had a slower period and discovered my guests were much more satisfied with my undivided attention. And if I’m being honest, the results and quality improved because I had more brain cells and emotional bandwidth to offer each individual. Customization became the name of the game.

I’ve since leaned into that idea. I analyzed the changes I was seeing, looked for ways to improve upon it, and wrote a book about it. “Cut the Trauma” is a quick read, but it encompasses more than a decade of lessons learned in the service industry.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I made the choice to open my studio, it was partly because I was still struggling to pay my bills despite being an educator on two education teams, mentor to new stylists, and one of the top stylists in the company I was with. I had achieved what looked like success, but was still living paycheck to paycheck with growing credit card debt.

Something had to give. I decided to bet on myself.

I took out a $5,000 personal loan and started buying furniture and products. People say that you can open a studio with just your shears and some shampoo, but I wanted to do it better. I insisted on having a stocked product shelf and a full color bar on day one. And I did!

I opened my doors, and the first few months were pretty painful. I was living on my credit cards and having to learn marketing from scratch. After over a decade in the beauty industry, I’m convinced nobody really wants to teach their employees how to market or they haven’t kept up with marketing in the modern world themselves. I found a mentorship, committed to paying the several thousand dollars I definitely didn’t have, and hoped it worked out. At that point, I knew my marriage was also on the line because I didn’t tell my husband how much it cost.

Good news- betting on myself paid off in dividends! I now have the cash to turn around and re-invest in the business comfortably, the bills are all paid, and, yes, my marriage is thriving, too.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The definition of success. My business is incredibly small as a one-chair hair salon. However, it is financially doing well enough to allow me the TIME to pursue so many other goals.

I work behind the chair three days a week, I’m in college full-time chasing a doctorate in psychology, and I insist on taking vacations and spending time with my 10-year-old still. And I CAN.

I’m able to start delegating some of the things I can’t stand doing like bookkeeping and social media, and I’ve been slowly buying my time with my family back. There’s nothing like going to the rock climbing gym with my son just because on a Tuesday.

Gary Vee mentions this perspective. Success is whatever brings you joy, and that does NOT have to mean being a millionaire.

For most of my life, I thought the only way to measure success was in dollars. Like many others, my family struggled in the fallout of the 2008 crash. I ended up a young, single mom working minimum wage in my early 20’s. I’ve escaped that cycle with a new perspective. I could double my income tomorrow if I committed to working 5 days behind the chair or to opening a salon with stylists working for me. But what would that cost me? My time? My mental peace? My family life? Those are how I measure success these days, and they are the non-negotiable guides I use in business choices.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.verdandisalon.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/verdandisalon
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/verdandi.

Image Credits
Morpheus Visuals