Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jesica Sexton . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Jesica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Our Sunday Dinners

I honestly never saw myself running a business let alone running a salon and a team of artistic hairdressers through some of the toughest years ever in business. We started running our salon in March 2018 ( when life was soooooooo easy)

In 2017 my father in law tossed out the idea of him wanting to own a salon and me join him to do the day to day managing. I said no thank you! It honestly wasn’t him I just never really wanted to deal with hairdressers. I knew how our industry could go and things are either great or really bad. He brought it up so many times I finally caved jumped on board. We were in such a unique position I had been at my current salon for about 6 years and was really happy there. I enjoyed my team and the salon guests so much. I had already started doing some team leadership for our current owner and we really had a great working relationship. He was ready to step back and dive back into just enjoying the industry and his craft. So we jumped in and took over. My father in law is a business man. He has a history of banking and owning a very successful dry cleaner where we live. I was entering in my 8th year of doing hair and had kind of done all the things hair dressers dream of. I was a National Educator for Paul Mitchell and had traveled Florida from top to bottom, I was the cutting specialist at PMTS Tampa for a few years, and currently had built a steady and loyal guest roster and was just loving doing hair. The next step of leading a team and running a salon seemed like a logical next step.

Our first year was great we grew I got my feet wet on hiring, coaching, and challenging a great team! We really were in a great stride. Fast forward to February 2020 one of my best staff members our front desk leader was leaving us to pursue a different career path. I won’t lie it was one of the hardest moments I had faced as a leader. I was a new mom feeling already stretched so thin and my right hand in the salon was stepping away.
Then a month later the world shut down and so did we. 6 weeks at home with the weight of a salon and a salon team on our shoulders. Our team was split on all things political and only agreed on one thing they all wanted to all make a paycheck again and fast. We reopened in late spring 2020 with a slew of new policies and practices. We really got back into a grove and navigated the shortages, price increases, social distancing, politics, and the extremely high cortisol levels of it all.

By 2021Our team had jumped into a fight or flight mode and couldn’t jump out of it. We found ourselves loosing a top stylist and our team all becoming more distant. A voice in the back of my head kept screaming jsut step away go rent a booth and just do some hair all alone. But my heart knew I would never do that. Our salon wasn’t just a salon it was our family salon and our team needed us to push through and bring our energy back! Our weekly Sunday dinners were spent talking and pushing around ideas of how to change and get our groove back. My father in law who is all business experience is great at talking real numbers and what we need to be successful and I know my people, and i know the salon side. See I have always wanted our salon to be a stylist safe haven. The salon where Stylists can come and just do hair and be happy. Work life balance is our goal always for our team. Because of that goal and mindset I have managed to keep 80% of our staff since we took over. Our turn over is extremely low. I think this is because we try to form real relationships with our staff and focus on listening to their needs as our top priority. this means at times we have really sacrificed profitability to maintain and keep our team for the long haul.

We offer the highest commissions in our market, along with paid vacation, weekly bonus opportunities, growth potentials, and flexible work schedules. I have sometimes had to speak my strong at times opinion at the Sunday Dinner table where the business side of my Father in law who sees the black and white of numbers comes out with his very specific goals. We both have different ideas and ways of getting to a plan and honestly I think that makes us the best team. He can be pushy with goals and budgets which with my people pleasing tendencies can be a great match. As much as we can push back each others thoughts and ideas we equally rely on each other for a sounding board. I run all my one on one sessions or coaching sessions with him before I talk to any of our team. Together we always find a way to come from a place of kindness but with a sometimes firm push in the right direction.

We are still navigating the industry and all of the changes that have come from 2020. The salon industry as a whole is completely different now. Our overhead is higher than ever before, marketing is not at all what it was, it is now a stylists market, and perceived value to our guests is EVERYTHING! We are in a phase of pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone to focus on growth. Our goals are still team based with a side of lets start to make some money again hahaha.

4 years ago if you asked me about our family run salon I would have said its great we are having fun, now when people ask me I reply with a smile and say we are going strong and nothing can stop us now!

Our Sunday Dinners are still filled with deep, sometimes slightly heated discussions that usually end with just me and my father in law alone unaware that we are the only ones still sitting at the table. We dream, we brainstorm, we plan and mostly we enjoy the fact we are running a salon together and not ever are either of us in it alone.

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.

I have been in the industry for 14 years. Our salon has been in it’s location for 12. We are a hairdresser salon. Our team comes first always. We believe If you create an environment where your staff feels supported, heard, inspired, and happy they will in return do great services and do it to the best of their ability. Which leads to happy guests and that leads to happy bosses. These days so many salons are facing the reality that stylist don’t want to work in hostile work environments anymore. There is nothing stopping stylists from walking out and renting a booth and these days their guests will follow them. So keeping your stylists happy and thriving is the key to your business surviving.

As a business we have started to focus on our staff really honing in on specific specialties. We specialize in blonding, dimensional color, color correction, texture services, hand tied hair extensions, micro point extensions, and tape in hair extensions. Our team has become so specialized in different areas we have someone for every guest who comes through our door. WE believe perfect salon guest placement is best achieved through match making. This is where we listen the guests needs, budget, lifestyle, hair goals, and mostly personalities to place them with the perfect stylist.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

GOOGLE!!!! We have dramatically changed our use and implementation of google in our business over the past 6 years. Our original owner built the salon from social media. Now a days it really is all about your google representation. Taking time to make sure your google business profile is correct, clear, has pictures, good reviews, and correct hours is almost all the marketing you need. Everyday we have a new guest in our building who found us on google. They tell us our reviews were so great they had to come in and see for themselves. Our salon software automatically sends out a reminder to all new guest to submit feedback about their salon experience. This is has dramatically increased our google review count!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

In our salon we hire hair dressers fresh out of hair school. This is great they come excited ready to learn more and they come with no bad habits to break. The goal is to of course get them on the floor taking guests as soon as possible. One of the biggest mistakes we have made in the past is putting young hairdressers on the floor before their skill set is ready. Having a nervous stylist who hasn’t honed in their skill set taking guests is like starting a fire in your breakroom and hoping it doesn’t reach the front of your salon. One not ready stylist can rake in more 1 star reviews than your business can keep up with. 1 star reviews dramatically change your online perceived value and perception. We have focused on training and building strong skill sets for all of our stylist which has in turn lead to strong positive customer feed back. Which is EVERYTHING these days.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.iStylexgsalon.com
• Instagram: iStylexgsalon
• Facebook: iStyle Salon