This is what it takes to run a damn salon.

Oliver Lash, how can I help you?

What's up Lashinistas? Welcome to the show.

This is the Oliver Lash podcast, where we talk about the ever-growing eyelash business.

This is your first time listening to our show. Welcome.

This podcast is dedicated to helping you grow as a Lash artist and or Lash business. This is your first time listening to our show. Welcome. This podcast is

dedicated to helping you grow as a lash artist and or lash business owner. So whether you work for

yourself or someone else, this podcast is for you. What's up guys? This is Sean and Mike Jones.

We're the owners of Oliver Lash. Our heart is to share with you guys our uphill battle in this

lash industry and to show you a real raw version of what

things really like yes things really like today's episode we're going to be talking about what

it takes to start a salon yeah what it takes the clothes on that I'm just kidding oh man we're

talking real and raw talking real and raw there's a lot of uh there's a lot of stuff out there. You know, people start salons and they're just like, why did I do this stuff? It's breaking more location. I should have done something else, another profession. Should have done only fans, which is probably a little more profitable and a little easier to do. But since we're talking about salons, we'll keep it lash related. Just so you guys know, if you guys haven't done so yet, make sure you guys subscribe to our podcast. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, Oliver Lash LV. And if you don't haven't done so yet, please make sure you refer someone that could greatly benefit from this podcast. We're super excited to be back podcasting again with you guys. We thank you for all the love we've been getting, getting a ton of downloads on Spotify and Apple, which we love. YouTube channel is still kind of growing, getting all new content up there. So make sure you check out tutorials and everything on the YouTube channel as well. Anyways, jumping in today's episode. So a lot of people ask, what is entailed with starting a salon? And I think that the issue is a lot of people think I'm just going to go out, I'm going to make this beautiful location. I'm going to decorate it all cute. I'm a set of a bunch of chairs and I'm just going to turn the lights on and clients are going to come rolling in the door. And that couldn't be further from the truth. And so what happens is you spend all this time and money in making it look good, thinking it's kind of like the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come, right? Type setup. But what happens is you find out it's tough to get customers in. And that's for a number of reasons. Number one, typically what happens when you open a business, the public does not know who you are yet. Or number two, you haven't built that trust with them yet. And that can be very difficult to get customers in. And if you don't have enough money coming in to cash flow, you're going to soon find out that you won't be able to pay the rent very long, and things will start looking gloom and doom, and you'll be on your way out the door. So one of the things my wife did in the very beginning that was very helpful for us is she lashed out of the house for as long as humanly possible.

And I'm not kidding you when I say she lashed literally from 2011 until 2015 when we opened that first location in Henderson.

It got to a point where it was first she was just doing free sets of lashes to get good at it.

But then what happened was it got so busy.

She was back to back seven times, seven days a week, you know, literally 12-hour runs where she'd just be doing non-stop lashes. We actually had to hire a second lash artist downstairs. This girl, Alia, that worked for us, and she actually worked out of a downstairs bedroom and she was taking clients as well. And I know if you've listened to us for a long time

you probably heard the story but so we would be sitting our house was in a nice neighborhood and there would be all these like brand new like range rovers and and Mercedes like pulling up all day long and like all these industry girls would be coming to our house to get their lashes done and my neighbors were scratching their heads are like what are they doing over there looks like they're running a, you know? And it was just, we were running the salon nonstop out of the house and I told my wife, I'm like, we're going to have to open. But the point I'm trying to make here is she actually did as many clients as she possibly could from home and stacked as much money as humanly possible. So if you're taking notes today, point one would be this. Try to work from home as long as you can to build your client base, not just to save money, but so that you have that constant book of business so that when you do open, it's time to actually, when I say have enough book of business to a point where you feel like you can't handle the clients you have. Like you are so busy, you're like, I got to hire hire somebody that's when it would be time to finally make the jump from home but save that money and build

that book of clients first the worst mistake you can possibly make is just opening the door and not

have any clients yet um and just going back because I have learned to the brothel no well kind of what I've learned through this whole

process especially with the prior business going through a merger acquisition and I think now it's

times two and this is just in general with whatever industry you want to get into is I feel like

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