We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Savannah Grizzaffe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Savannah below.

Savannah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My mission with Southern Beauty Skin simply put is to create confidence healing, and awareness of energy work and healing wherever my business resides. From a very young age I loved making people feel good about themselves, and noticed small things about my friends I thought were positive and would point these things out. I quickly realized this would brighten peoples days, so I started doing this more and more as I got older. When I decided to go to esthetics school, I didn’t realize how much this small joy of mine would coincide with my new found career until I opened my own business. Opening my own business gave me free rein to create anything I wanted! In my early 20s, I was confused on where I wanted my life to go, I just knew I wanted to continue helping people feel good about themselves! After a couple of years, I really found personal clarity, which helped my find clarity within my business. Yes, you read that right, Years! I feel as though many people don’t talk about the fact that it can take years to really find the streamlined trajectory of a business, and that it can also change. The clarity I found, was that I wanted to not only be a successful esthetician in the realm of creating results, but also be a Confidence Healer. For instance, having the ability to make a brand new mom feel like herself again, or give her the confidence to know she can find herself again, will always bring me back to knowing I have found my try “why” and mission with this business. When it comes to energy work and awareness, this is more on the esthetician-to-esthetician side of things. Many estheticians have come to me saying they would like to find a more holistic approach, as a whole, not just with their product line of choice but their entire business. However, they are afraid, don’t know where to start, the list goes on. I have the opportunities to create a safe space, and protect these estheticians as well, with being able to provide scientific proof of how the “woo woo” side of esthetics is just as beneficial and result oriented as the medical side of esthetics.

Savannah, 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?

Hi y’all! My name is Savannah, and I’ve been in the esthetics industry for almost 7 years now! Time has absolutely flown, and there have been so many ebbs and flows to my career path. I started out with chronic illnesses beginning in high school, hindering me from feeling like college would be a successful route to take so I started exploring other options with things that I loved. One of those things was makeup! Beginning my journey in Florida, to legally freelance, you do have to be licensed in esthetics, cosmetology, etc so I decided esthetics would be the best route as makeup and skin go hand in hand. After beginning esthetics school I fell in love, almost immediately with all things skin! I was 19 at the time, still living at home, and I remember my mom asking me “who are you and where is my daughter who hates school?!” because I was studying any chance I had, nonstop talking about what I was learning, etc. I graduated, obtaining a job as a basic level esthetician at a full service salon and my career took off from there. I went out on my own after a year and some months, and that’s when my life REALLY changed! I learned so much about myself, in the early stages of my business, Southern Beauty Skin. After two years of owning my business, I was invited onto the Circadia Educator team, AND decided to move across the country (not correlated!). I moved myself, my dog, and my business to a small mountain town in Southwest Montana, and started over. I built the business again from the ground up, and began traveling as an educator for the skincare line Circadia, and was full of so much joy, fire and passion with this fresh start! Throughout my time of starting the business, and the move, I leaned heavily into a lot of self help, business building, etc books and podcasts. I also invested in one paid business building course, and it taught me SO much about mindset and attracting ideal clients! This is why I was not scared to start the business over completely. Through this journey I really figured out the TYPE of client I wanted to serve, and who would align best with me, because I was finding MYSELF at the same time! I like to call myself a confidence healer, and create results with progressive over aggressive treatments. It took me time to find this niche, and not be scared to not “follow the fads”, but it was so worth it! I now mainly focus on timed, customized facial treatments and Brazilian waxing. I’m solving an array of problems for clients, but mainly I’m educating them an skin HEALTH, whatever that may look like for them! Whether that is pigmentation relief, and how to maintain the results we achieve, microbiome and barrier health, aging concerns, and some acne! I feel like what sets me apart from others, especially being in a small town, is HOW I utilize my chosen product line(s), and the experience/relationships I create for/with my clients. You can give the best facial in the world, but if the client doesn’t feel as though they connect with you, I personally feel as though your retention may not be as high as it could be. I also have been working with estheticians minimally, 1:1 to help them build their business, and learn more about Skin Analysis in particular. I feel as though if you have a strong ability to give a thorough skin analysis, you can treat just about any concern that walks through your door, and you will be able to decide what skin concern/condition you really want to niche down into.

I am SO proud of being able to call myself a small business owner of almost 5 years. There have been a lot of trials and tribulations, but nothing has anchored me more, in the best way, than my business! The successes it has had in two different states, I will be forever grateful for and proud of. Having that establishment, and becoming a household name, has been a dream come true. I am also proud of the relationships I have created with my clients, even the ones back in Florida who still order product from me, or reach out to me from time to time! It really confirms that I am doing the right thing, and I’m in the right place. I also am proud to say I have never wavered with my brand. Even if I came across people who didn’t “get it”, who thought progressive treatments were a thing of the past, more holistic practices were just “trendy”, I never wavered. I’ve always stayed true to myself and my business. My last, but certainly not least achievement I am proud of is becoming a Global Educator within two years of being an educator for Circadia, and being awarded Educator of The Year this year.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn a lesson I didn’t even realize was one I had learned and that was my Relationship with Money! I had no idea how “unworthy” I felt, of succeeding, and making the money I dream of making until I opened the business. Once I realized this was the root of my issue on sales with retail, for instance, I began reading books on shifting perspective on money and healing your relationship with money. That was just the first step though, then I started to actually DO the work, and apply the things I learned (sigh, I know. It’s hard!!!) But, once I started, it was easy to keep going. It’s an ongoing process though, I definitely find myself being aware of old habits or thought processes and having to lean on the systems I have learned.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The biggest pivot I’ve had to handle is hands down opening my business 3 months before Covid shut the world down! I had to pivot, hard, to stay afloat. I had my personal bills to cover, as well as rent at my studio and other work bills. I pivoted to selling at home facial kits (Circadia launched these shortly after I started putting my own together, for Covid, and to help us have some form of income if we so chose to go that route!), doing online consultations for clients, utilized Drop Shipping for product sales, and lots of other things in between but those were the main sources of income! I learned from basically the beginning, that you will always be hit with curve balls, and you can’t control that. However, what you can control, is how you respond and grow from those curveballs!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.southernbeautyskin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southernbeautyskin

Image Credits

For The West and Wild Photography