We were lucky to catch up with Patty Najar recently and have shared our conversation below.

Patty, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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.

When I first began my nail tech journey, I started working from my garage at home. This would set both my client on myself and an uncomfortable situation sometimes because it would be ridiculously hot here in Houston for a while, or sometimes even ridiculously cold. I luckily now have a nail studio that is a lot more comfortable and a lot more personalized. I feel like giving your clients a comfortable space really does take you to the next level.

Another thing that definitely helped me out was having a booking system. In the beginning, I would book clients by direct messages, and it wasn’t ideal. There would sometimes be a lot of back-and-forth in order to get someone fully booked and honestly it just wasn’t very professional. Once I got a booking site, it made everything a lot easier for me as well as for my clients. Everything was laid out for them in a way that was accessible and easy to use. I definitely recommend for any business owners to have a booking site if they are currently booking through direct messages because it really does “up” your professionalism!

Patty, 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?

My name is Patty Najar, I am 23 years old and I am the owner of @Patsglamgram__. I get this question quite a bit for my clients and it is “ How did you get into doing this”. I told them that honestly it was not something that I pictured myself doing as a career but that it is something that came as a very good surprise. However, it was not entirely surprising. I have always been into all things nails, and it started out as a hobby- I used to be a really bad nail biter and by doing my nails I was able to stop doing that for a while. This craft ended up becoming a passion of mine, and something that I really enjoy doing..

A little story behind the name of my business is that some of my close friends call me “Pats” so that is the beginning part of the name and I chose to use the word “GLAM” because I am also a make up artist, so I did not want to limit my name to only nails. The last part of it is “gram” for Instagram actually! (This was before I created my Facebook page, but I never changed it because I felt like it rolls off the tongue already)

I now offer make up services for a special events, acrylic, nail services, such as full sets, and overlays. I have most recently started offering gel services as well, such as gel manicures, and gel extensions. Something that really keeps me going is seeing the confidence boost I give my clients when their nails are finished. This is especially close to my heart, because as I mentioned before, I did used to bite my nails pretty bad when I was younger, so I can definitely relate to that confidence boost!

One of the things that I am most proud of, and that I would love for people to know about my brand is that I am a perfectionist. I like to think that my work is very detailed and that I really try my best for my work to look cleaned and polished from any angle.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When I initially started my business in February 2019, I was working as a helpdesk assistant in a computer lab at San Jacinto College. Meanwhile, I was also a student at the University of Houston downtown. Being able to work at San Jacinto College was how I was able to start purchasing my first products. It was going well up until March 20 20 when all of the world shut down due to COVID-19. Unfortunately, the position I had at San Jac closed and I was left without that job which transition to me into working full-time doing nails. From then on, I had to really budget myself and see how much I was spending on supplies. It was definitely hard at first because I was used to using the money that I was receiving from my part-time job to help cover the additional expenses since I was only charging a very low amount because I was a beginner. I had to start taking into consideration, the profit I was making, and the amount of money it was costing me to keep up with my supplies. I would create lists and started keeping track of the expenses to have something to look back on!

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

I think definitely the transition from doing this, just as a side hustle to doing it full-time really does show resilience. I unfortunately only had about a year of practice before Covid came and slowed things down quite a bit. I continued to push through and I would practice whenever I could on my sisters, my mom or my friends to keep up with my improvement. It would have been easy for me to just quit, and look for a different job but because I enjoy it so much, I did what I could to keep moving and with the help of my loved ones, and the clients that were still choosing to stick through with me, I was able to move up, thankfully and further establish my business!

Contact Info:

• Website: Patsglamgram.square.site
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/patsglamgram__?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Patsglamgram
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/patsglamgram__?s=21&t=CFlHNnHoiyNHKVmRBfbAmA
• Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@patsglamgram?_t=8cCo0Uajkgl&_r=1