We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenny Cha. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenny below.

Jenny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I am very happy with the career I chose being a hairstylist. It has given me the option to be as creative as I want and bring out the natural artist I am with this job. I love the feeling of being able to create a look for my clients, whether they give me the freedom to do whatever I’d like or if we collaborate our ideas together to get the final look. Do I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a regular job? Yes! I’ve thought about it many times.. Maybe like a 9-5 job, or a lot of my friends work as nurses 3 days a week- night shifts. It may be hard, but they get really good benefits and get to have a couple of full days to spend with families and vacations. I’m a freelance hairstylist so I work by appointments only and am very flexible myself, but if I don’t work- I don’t get paid, I am self-employed so I don’t really have any benefits for health, paid vacations, and so on.. I do wonder how my life would have been different if I had a different type of job, but would I change it now? Nah, I don’t think so. I’m happy where I am now.

Jenny, 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?

I’m @_jennysorakong, a freelance hairstylist and makeup artists working out of Koreatown, Los Angeles. I provide mostly hair services in the salon and from time to time do gigs outside of the salon. As in gigs, meaning working on clients for music videos, events, tours, photoshoots, etc. Mainly in the salon I provide haircuts, hair chemical services (colors, perms, straightening services), for all ages and genders, I think I’m mainly known for my haircuts, color correction and creative color services. I have a wide range of clients that have been with me for over a decade and just recently coming in to see me. Even with over 14 years of experience I am constantly growing in my craft and my business. As a lot of my clients know I am very tedious with my craft and like to take extra attention to what I am doing; you’ll understand when in my chair. haha!

I am mostly proud of how far I have come from a couple of clients to over hundreds of returning clients. I’ve also mentioned before with VoyageLA / ShoutoutLA that I’ve always dreamed of working on celebrities and K-pop Idols growing up… I’ve had the honor to work with a handful of artists from Korea, which I’m pretty proud of. Although recently it’s been hard to make time for these jobs with my recent salon schedule, but I still try to make time for fun jobs working with amazing artists because it is still an ongoing dream for me.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m not going to lie, I don’t have a huge audience on social media.. I have about 1.4k followers on my instagram and I’m going to take a guess that 40% are clients that have been to me before, 25% that just like looking at cool hair, 15% kpop fans, and the rest is probably just spam accounts. But! it was exciting when I went passed the 1k mark. Tons of social media users have way more followers and audiences but, I’ve researched how to grow a following you need to catch the peoples eye.. So if you see my feed there’s a bunch of vivid colors or color correction transformations. The before and after photos of my clients are dramatic so I think a lot of viewers come back to check them out. Working with clients with a bigger following also helps, examples for clients with “blue checks’ or Kpop artists as well. Interestingly enough, after working with a client like that my following does grow through their fanbase.. So, I’m thankful for that as well.

I’m not sure if I would be suitable to give advice on people trying to build a social media presence because I still am trying myself, but being different, eye-catching, posting often, having continuity in your postings really do help! I know there’s a lot of tips and tricks on growing a big following or social media audience but to me, having a REAL audience and REAL interaction and support is more important.. I don’t want over a 5k following if they aren’t interested in my work or if they aren’t even real, like those many spam accounts.. To me its meaningless.. enough of those “Oh your beautiful, interesting work! like to chat.” DM’s from random spam accounts that follow. No thanks.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Hmm.. Strictly my view, I think this platform is a great way to support artists and creatives trying to make it in the creative ecosystem. Thanks to you guys being interested in my story and having it out in the world, surprisingly a lot of my clients take time to read the articles and new clients read them before they meet me. So platforms like this help people like us get to be known to a bigger audience.

Also, best way to support each other is to praise and share each others work. Also working together in sharing ideas, helping each other grow by teaching each other techniques and sharing experiences. I’ve had many other stylists share they’re tips with me and I do the same to growing stylists as well. Now with social media platforms giving each other shout outs and tagging each other is also a great way to help each other be seen and grow. It sounds easy, but being busy in our every day lives I feel like its easy to forget and not really think it helps, but it really does.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jennysorakong.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/_jennysorakong
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jennysorakong
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jenny-sora-kong-los-angeles-4?osq=jennysorakong