We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Megan and Carey Ann of Salon Shade. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Salon below.
Megan and Carey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
Our story on scaling up is a story of learning how to be new at something. We were stylists for about six years, and in that time we had gotten a good client base, we had refined our skills working behind the chair and had felt like we were at our ceiling until we discovered the art of hair extensions. In our industry you are taught to be a jack of all trades and a master of none so it was very against the grain to niche down and choose to serve a very specific client base. We had to learn something completely new, and then once we mastered it we made a choice to start our client list from scratch. It was hard, but we new if we made the commitment we would see a return in the long run. Once we saw the impacts of the change we became passionate about providing that same career path for other stylists.
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
Our names are Carey Ann and Megan and we are the owners of Salon Shade. We began our careers as stylists in 2010, and we are extension and color specialists. We pride ourselves on providing more than just a service, but a feeling. At Shade we take the luxury service of extensions and pair it with a laidback, yet beautifully curated client experience. Our luxury space, warm staff and our education are what sets us apart from others. We are most proud of our mentorship with our stylists. Serving them, empowering them, and showing them that industry standards can be broken is hands down what we are most proud of. Our space is pretty incredible to, we won’t lie, we’re really proud of that!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Resilience was the lesson we learned from quite literally day one. We were set to open a small studio March 5th, 2020. On March 3rd our neighborhoods got hit with a deadly tornado. Any feelings of excitement were quickly taken away, and we postponed our opening by a few days to help the clean up of our community. We finally opened and then two weeks later we had to close our doors for 8 weeks due to Covid – 19. To open a business, and then a month later file for a loan because you couldn’t work was…rough to say the least. We had no idea how and when we were going to continue but somehow we did. We were able to re-open 8 weeks later and then were faced with investing even more money into PPE, and were working overtime to fit clients in. Fast forward a year and a half later, we had an overwhelming amount of clientele support and moved into a store front. Opening those doors to our dream space every morning is a reminder of where we started. A very humbling position, where we experienced the lowest point professionally, to now a position of seeing our hard work pay off. We never gave up, and as cheesy as it sounds we truly just continued to show up every day until we got into our dream space!
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
As owners, there’s a lot that’s required of you that you don’t anticipate in the beginning. The investment to make your brand come to life requires a lot of you, professionally and personally. We hit the wall that we are sure most owners hit when you’re at you max investment of ‘how are we going to pay our bills?’ As leaders, we are in a position to take care of our team first. There were for sure times where we did’t take our pay because we had to choose our team over ourselves. Nothing really prepares you for that gut punch of the reality that the responsibility is on you. It was a hard lesson to learn, but we are thankful for it. Now we are in a more steady place, but we invest a huge portion of what we bring in with clients back into our business. It’s a hard sacrifice to make now but we know it will be worth it in the long run!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.salonshade.com
- Instagram: salonshade.nashville
Image Credits
Photographer: Jayda Iye