We recently connected with Madison Morris and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Madison, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Light Heart Studios + Coffeeshop was so much more than an idea come to life. It was a lifelong dream of mine since I was a little girl to create the most beautiful business that served and loved on everyone who walked through the door.

I’ve been in the beauty industry since I was 16, working as a makeup artist assistant and working my way up to going to esthetics school at 18. I then had a pretty uphill battle “hustling” my way to success as an independent lash artist. Overtime, I experienced some of the darkest parts of the industry and knew I had to be the one to change that.

When you are an independent service provider, you’ll experience doubt, loneliness, fear of the unknown and you often wish you could be apart of a community. Most service providers in our industry work at “salon suites”. I was on my 5th suite when I decided I had to build a better model than the standard corporate suites that everyone is used to.

I wanted to create a salon suites concept where everyone is independently running their business, while being apart of a community. My husband and I signed a 5 year lease on a 3,000 sq ft empty building in Scottsdale and we got to work on a 9 month full buildout. We built this place from the ground up with a team of expert architects and contractors and she is a beauty! It was the most challenging undertaking we have ever experienced and the biggest risk of our lives. Financially, emotionally and physically it wore us down. We decided to take on this venture at ages 23 and 25 which in itself was difficult to navigate such a large buildout with no experience.

We felt deeply in our hearts that if we poured everything we had into this dream, it would change so many lives.

Light Heart Studios offers more than any salon suites in the industry currently offers. Besides all of the basic amenities, we offer our renters quarterly brunches, strategy meetings, free branding photoshoots, marketing, personalized business coaching, workshops and access to use our training room. Our biggest goal is the success of everyone in the building. We want to set a unique new standard for suite rentals in the beauty industry forever.

We opened a gorgeous specialty coffeeshop instead of a standard reception desk to truly invite community into the space. Our best friends, Caleb and Moriah co-own and operate the coffeeshop and they are the best of the best at creating relationships with every client and customer who walks through the door. We believe this is the perfect hybrid business model. Our renters also get to enjoy room service!

What got us most excited about executing this dream was the opportunity to serve as many people as possible. We feel so excited for the future of what this space will do for so many.

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

My name is Madison Morris, I am 23 and I’m the CEO and founder of Light Heart Studios.

I am a licensed esthetician, educator and master lash artist and I’ve been in the beauty industry for 6 years. I was raised on a sailboat and explored over 20 countries before I was a teenager. Even as a little girl, I knew my passion was making the world a little more beautiful than I found it.

I provide individualized mentoring for beauty industry professionals. I offer 1:1 and small group in-person lash extension trainings that I teach weekly out of our beautiful new training academy.

I also teach an online course on how to successfully start your lash career. It is called “Going Independent” and it is available on my website. I remember how hard it was for me to get into this industry and work my way to the top and my goal is to create a roadmap for those with the same dreams to be able to achieve their goals without the struggles I faced.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I met my husband, Elliott at a Halloween party in Alaska when I was 19. I was working 12 hour days at a local spa, I was obsessed with my job and I was making minimum wage. Elliott was the first person to see my talent and believe in me more than I believed in myself.

He is a robotics engineer so his life revolves around building things and solving problems. He has taken every small dream I’ve ever had and figured out ways to make them a reality.

Every idea I have, he has channeled into a course or a service or a building and I can’t thank him enough for how hard he works to make Light Heart a dream come true.

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

My private lash trainings really set me apart in the lash industry. I originally started training other artists with the intention of training 3 or 4 artists in my hometown in Anchorage, Alaska. That has now grown into a multi 6 figure lash education company that has trained over 100 lash artists from around the world. I teach 1 student in person per week and doing so has created such a special network of people.

I think that has built up such a strong reputation for me within the lash community. My strengths are getting to know people on a deeper level and finding ways for them to fall in love with their business.

Contact Info:

• Website: lightheartlash.com
• Instagram: lightheartlash AND lightheartcoffeeshop
• Facebook: Light Heart Lash
• Other: follow LightHeartCoffeeShop on Instagram! Open 7-5 Monday-Friday and 8-3 on Saturday tiktok- lightheartcoffeeshop

Image Credits
Photo Credits; Moriah Holland @moriahmaeholland on instagram