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

Hi Kay , thanks for 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.

Looking at how much my business has grown since starting, I can honestly say that I do appreciate the highs and lows. When I first launched Kay’s Hair Extensions, I was only thinking about how I could profit from the bundle deals I could put together. I did not think about my ideal audiences, how to track success and how to expand my reach — I was only focused on how to create a profit. This resulted in little to no growth and I realized that I wasn’t tracking what was coming in and going out nor did I know who my target audience was. By year 4, I realized that I needed to take a step back and really decide on where I wanted to take my business to ensure that I was actually growing it into what I have always imagined. This did require some rebranding and I even had to invest into some business courses (and meet with business coaches) to understand how to leverage the marketing tools available on the social platforms we all use today. This ‘rebrand’ phase probably stretched over a period of 6-8 months. 

After completing the rebrand, I wanted to incorporate my love for hair extensions into my business marketing to allow my audience to see who I was as the face of Kay’s Hair Extensions. I enjoy switching up my hair and I really enjoy wearing wigs so I decided that I wanted to add wigs as a new service; this was the start of KHE Flash Fridays. Rather than making my clients feel alone on their wig journey, I wanted to be a part of their journey to provide the education and support I didn’t have. I began offering styled wigs that can be easily installed by a stylist, or self installed, at a discounted price. In that year alone, compared to the previous year, my sales increased by 177% and I was able to connect with so many new and potential clients! 

Rather than using standard photos of the wig(s), I started using live videos to market my wigs. Now, initially, I was beyond nervous and thought I was wasting my time. But then I noticed that by the 3rd or 4th video, I had received more engagement from my followers than I did posting standard posts. This is when I discovered that videos were going to be the best method of marketing my products; plus, my following increase directly correlated to my increased video engagement. Now that I could see that my clients were tuning in and I was providing them with content they enjoyed, I was determined to connect with my audience and expand my product base. 

I started asking my clients about what they liked and disliked, and started sending regular emails to create engagement outside of social media. I also started paying attention to the units that sold in 1 day vs the units that sold in 4 days to get a better idea of popular/preferred styles. After a while of gathering customer feedback, I chose to expand my product line to include other hair and beauty accessories. Kay’s Hair Extensions now offers Lashes, Bonnets, Elastic Bands, Apparel and more! In addition, I taught myself how to create custom wigs which is another

service available to my clients who desire to transition into wearing wigs but would like to start with a wig created just for them. Listening to and understanding my customers was a huge and very important step in scaling up my business. 

I have had the honor of partnering with local organizations in the community to fill in needs gaps, I will be offering free Diva Warrior & Survivor Kits this year (Oct 2022) to all Divas who’s experienced a cancer diagnosis, and now that I am certified in Data Analytics, I have started tracking revenue growth and customer trends across each state to determine where to target my marketing campaigns. Today, at year 7, I appreciate the evolution and growth of Kay’s Hair Extensions more than ever. No, everything is not perfect but I have made unimaginable strides, learned so much more about myself and my business, and have connected with so many great people and organizations. I look forward to helping my clients achieve the looks they desire and it brings me so much joy being able to provide a service and build a community that I didn’t have when I was first introduced to hair extensions.

Kay , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Kay and Kay’s Hair Extensions was created to provide women with the information, support, and tools necessary to switch up their hairstyles. I love changing my hairstyles whenever and however I feel like it and I believe that all women should have the choice to do so! 

About 7 years ago, I was in college looking to create a side hustle that would generate some income to support my college life, along with the money my parents were sending. During that time, I didn’t know that I would end up creating an empire that would soon support women all over the world in various walks of life. While building my empire, I’ve obtained a Bachelor’s in Community Health and a Minor in Social Work from the University of Central Missouri. 

So WHAT made me get into hair extensions, you ask?

I come from a family FULL of women who have always expressed themselves through their hair. You name the color, I’ve seen them ALL! Being raised in such an empowering environment encouraged me to want to use my gifts to help others realize that they too can express themselves through their hair. I have also experienced hair loss and breakage from not fully understanding how to care for my hair while wearing extensions; so I made it my job to ensure no woman ever has to experience that. 

I’ve learned, it’s not the hair or the hair color that RADIATES BEAUTY, it’s YOU, the INDIVIDUAL. Your style, the way that you strut, and the way that you speak your truth is what gives the hair LIFE. 

I can proudly say that I have taught myself how to create wigs by hand and by sewing machine, and I have also begun diving more into customizing colors! I have had the pleasure of creating more than a few custom wigs for a couple of my clients in addition to custom coloring a few units but my dream is to connect with insurance companies to provide medical wigs for my Diva Warriors/Survivors. 

I am a strong advocate of women switching up their looks as often as they feel, why? BECAUSE WE CAN. If you like your sew-ins and prefer bundles, THAT’S OK, and if you just like to put on a new wig every day, THAT’S OK. At the end of the day when you walk out into the world it’s all about how YOU OWN IT. 

Kay’s Hair Extensions is here to help you AMPLIFY your beauty – always remember that! I offer additional products outside of hair extensions, so if you’re not looking to purchase hair extensions go ahead and check out my Diva Lashes, Bonnets, KHE Apparel and more!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building my social media presence was one of the hardest things for me to do! I’d like to think that I do a great job of speaking to people and engaging in a conversation when in person, but when it came to my business and building my community of Divas, I felt so lost. 

I first started by creating an Instagram business page and began following all of the people I knew personally. Then, I started searching similar hair hashtags to see if there were some profiles that I would be interested in following and followed those pages. When it came to

gaining new and unique followers, I saw most of those come from my video content when marketing my wigs or promotions and including mostly used hashtags in those posts. I do think that the hashtags help but it is important to be strategic when using them so that you get the most reach out of them. I would suggest using 2 or 3 large hashtags (used 50M times or more) and 1 or 2 smaller hashtags (used under 1M times) at least, and then more or less depending on your goal. 

In addition, I created a business profile on Facebook and a Facebook group (The Diva Network), to build my social presence and provide my followers with avenues to communicate with me, informally. I do think that the Facebook Group has been a little difficult for me since I want my content to be curated in a way that promotes conversation and engagement; but it’s still growing and there is still more work to be done. 

One final piece of advice that I was given and use til’ this day – always show up as ME! It is easy to think that we have to sell ourselves to people or create a false illusion, but in reality, if we are honest and they like the product, they will most likely follow and want to support. 

Don’t ever be afraid to show up for your business and always be open to talking to your followers. You may have a follower who wants to do a collaboration with you OR you could gain a longtime new customer, you just never know.Building your social presence is definitely key to growing your business, but it is important to study your audience as it grows so that you can retain them.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I had to unlearn was correlating business success to following count. It is so easy to assume that if you have a large following on your business pages/profiles, you are making lots of money and that is so not true. 

I learned this when I first hit about 300 followers and saw that I was only seeing a small portion of those followers engaging with my content and an even smaller portion of those followers actually purchasing or inquiring about a service/product. I thought, ‘I have 300 followers so I should be seeing a quarter of those people making a purchase’ and in reality maybe 3 or 4 of those people had purchased. I also learned that some of the clients who were purchasing had not found me through Instagram but had heard about my business from someone they knew and came to my website from my facebook business page. 

All in all, I learned that word of mouth is still a great marketing tool and to remember that a following count doesn’t speak to the success of my business. It just lets me know who is

interested in staying up to date with my business/promotions and personally, I look at those as sales lead opportunities.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kayshairext.com/
• Instagram: kayshairextensions
• Facebook: Kay’s Hair Extensions
• Twitter: KaysHairExt_
• Youtube: Kays Hair Extensions

Image Credits
Kay’s Hair Extensions