 Still waiting on that Nespresso sponsorship! Hello, good morning. Welcome back to Vlogmas. I think this is number 10. I can't believe that we were getting down to the end. It's Saturday morning, and I'm currently getting ready for the day. I have work this morning. I was supposed to have three clients, but my first one canceled and it actually kind of worked out because it allowed me to get a little bit of editing done this morning. And both of my clients today are new. So the first one's coming in for a highlight haircut, and then the second one is just a cut. So it should be a pretty easy short day, and then later this evening I am going out to dinner for my friend Maddie's birthday. And today is my last day in North Carolina before I go up to Pennsylvania for Christmas. So it's kind of a perfect way to spend my last day. Oh, and last night I gave myself curtain bangs. So once I finish my makeup, I will take this headband down, and I need to blow them out again because they got a little messed up while I was sleeping. But I will finally give you guys the big reveal. Here's the bangs. And if you saw the last vlog, I toned my hair last night too. So now it's nice and dark and shiny again. I think they're super cute when I pull my hair back or do like a half up kind of style. And I feel like it just gives my hair a little bit more body. So yeah, and they're long enough that I can still tuck them behind my ears, which is so nice. And then I just have like these little pieces that fall out the front, but I actually think this is so cute. This gives me like 90s Britney Spears, Melissa Joan Hart, but I am gonna head to the salon now. So this was my first client. She had not had her hair colored in a couple of years. And she was desperately in need of a haircut. She had a lot of split ends. So the goal was to add some color to her hair. She said that she wanted dimension, but she still wanted to be a brunette. She didn't want anything too light or too bold. She wanted to keep it really natural and super low maintenance and then just wanted to clean up her haircut and get her hair nice and healthy again. So I did some TZ lights throughout her hair. And I can't remember what I did for her toner, but I did a nice, really warm, rich tone and a nice haircut with a bunch of layers. And this was her final hair. I got a little bit shiny. It's around six o'clock now, I think. My friend's birthday dinner is at eight thirty. I'm so tired right now, and I'm really looking forward to going to it, but I am feeling tired. I had such a hard time falling asleep last night, and then I got up kind of early this morning, so I did get a lot of sleep last night. So I am pretty tired, and I was sitting on the couch watching Gilmore Girls, but I was like, hmm, I think I need to get up and move around because I can feel myself. Like if I sit there much longer, I was going to fall asleep. And I'm scared if I do that, that then I'm not going to want to get up. I'm leaving tomorrow to go to Pennsylvania, and originally I wasn't really in any rush. I was going to just sleep in and then leave whenever I felt like it. But now we're supposed to be getting a tropical storm. And all week I have been prepping to have everything done and ready so that I could leave Sunday, and my suitcase is already packed. So I really don't want to have to stay an extra day or two to wait out the storm, especially because like now I have no groceries left in the fridge, and obviously I don't want to get stuck in a storm and put myself in a dangerous situation. The storm is supposed to be moving north, and I don't think it's supposed to hit over here until around like nine, ten o'clock in the morning. So I want to leave a couple hours before that so that I can be ahead of the storm and hopefully make it to Pennsylvania before the storm gets there. So my plan is to pack up my car tonight and then set an alarm for six in the morning and just get up and go. But yeah, I'm hoping that I won't be out too late tonight, so that way I can just come home and get to bed and get as much sleep as I can. Because obviously I want to be well rested before I do the drive as well. Now I'm going to touch up my hair really quick. I have not used this bad boy in years. And I've actually been getting several questions recently about blow-dry brushes, specifically if I've ever used the Revlon one. This is the only one that I've used and this is like the original version. I bought this back in like 2019, maybe I want to say. And I really like these a lot. I think that they're so easy to use. You get beautiful results. And I highly recommend them. I think that they are a great tool to have. And like I said, I've only ever tried the Revlon ones. So I don't know how the other ones are, like the more professional salon brand ones. But this one, I will say it gets very, very hot. So you definitely don't want to use this on your hair when it's sopping wet. Wait till it's already mostly dry and then just use it for smoothing and styling. Because if your hair is soaking wet, it's going to take a while to get it dry with this first of all. And then you're just going to be putting a lot of hot heat on your hair and it can cause heat damage. Also make sure that you're using a heat protectant beforehand. Because like I said, it gets really hot. But if you're just using it sparingly, it's totally fine. And I already put heat protectant in my hair. So I'm going so easy to get your hair super smooth and silky. And I love doing like the little flip on the ends much better. I just feel like every time I'm at work, my hair gets a little bit frizzy because when I'm shampooing and stuff, or like washing the color bowls, like water always just kind of splashes all over the place. But yeah, speaking of work, today went really well. My two clients were both so amazing. I know I didn't get any clips of the second one. She just was a haircut, but it came out really pretty. And she was so great. And it turns out she's the sister of one of my other clients. It's just so sweet when someone refers a person they know to me. Because it goes to show like, not only do they like me enough to keep coming back to me themselves, but they're like raving about me to their friends and family too. And that is such a good feeling and it means so much to me. But that's what I wanted to talk about growing your clientele and how I have been working on rebuilding a new clientele in a new state. Because if you don't already know the story, I've been doing hair professionally since 2017. And I started my hair career in Pennsylvania and I built a pretty good reputation for myself. I had a really steady clientele. I had people coming from different states to come get their hair done with me. And then when I moved to North Carolina two years ago, I decided to take a little bit of a break from hair because I was feeling burnt out at that point. I didn't know if I wanted to stick with it or not. And it was very overwhelming, the idea of trying to find a new salon home and starting from the ground up, having to rebuild a clientele, reestablish myself in a new place where I didn't know anyone. So I just did YouTube full time for a while. And then after about 10 months or so, I was starting to miss the salon atmosphere. So I started working at the salon doing the front desk. And then after a few months of that, I started to really miss doing hair and taking clients of my own. So I started taking clients occasionally here and there in addition to doing the front desk. Then I started doing every single Saturday. And I feel like I've been growing a good clientele pretty easily. And it got to a point where I was booking out Saturdays, like months in advance. So I was like, okay, what do I want to do now? Because in order to keep regulars on my book, I'm going to need to have more availability. So now I'm not doing the front desk at all anymore. And I'm going to be doing Tuesdays and Saturdays every week taking clients. And I feel like I'm very quickly going to get booked up again, doing two days. And then I'm going to see from there what I want to do. If there's going to be room for me at the salon to do more than that. Or I really would love to eventually go off on my own and open my own salon suite. And that's kind of my goal for 2024 is work really hard to grow my clientele, have some good, steady, consistent regulars that I can feel comfortable getting my own suite. But I wanted to share what I've been doing because I get messages and comments on a regular basis from people asking me about that. You're in a similar situation where you just moved or you're about to move to a new state and you have to start over. And it is so overwhelming and it can be stressful because it's like, this is your livelihood. If you don't have clients and you're not doing services, you're not making any money. So like, what are you going to do? So this is what has been working for me. I think first of all, finding a salon. I see people online that they go and they open their own place. They get their own suite and somehow they make it work. They find clients and sure, maybe I could do that too. But that's more risky to me. So what I did was I started working in a salon that's well-known in the area. And that is my number one piece of advice. Find a well-known salon because they are most likely going to be in high demand and you're going to get a lot of people in your chair very easily without even having to advertise yourself personally. People are going to be just wanting to get in with someone at the salon and if you're new and you don't have any clients yet, then you'll most likely be able to fill up pretty easily. So that's what I did and that's definitely been helping. I'm not able to like just rely on that by itself because there's a lot of stylists at my salon and all of them except for the owner are still taking new clients. So I'm not the only person with an open book but that definitely helps a lot. I think it also helps if you can offer availability that a lot of people are looking for. Weekends, weeknights, you know, a lot of people work nine to five during the week. So even though it kind of sucks working the weekend but that will help fill your book up significantly. And my thing too is like I'm not just looking to get as many clients as possible necessarily. Like it's quality over quantity for me. I wanna make sure that the clients that I am taking are clients that are a good fit for me, that I actually want, that they are requesting services that I actually enjoy doing, that I am good and confident at doing and that they're clients that I actually am gonna want and be able to keep long term. Cause I'm not just trying to get butts in my chair. I want people that are going to become regulars and are gonna be loyal to me and keep coming back and refer their friends and family to me. Because that's what's going to help me be successful and allow me to keep growing. Not just people that are coming in one time because I'm running a promo and they wanna just get a discount. Cause like yeah, if you do a Groupon or something you're gonna get people booking appointments but are they ever gonna come back? Probably not. Are they ever gonna come back and wanna pay full price? No. That's what's important to me too. I want people that are gonna respect my time, respect our cancellation policy that are gonna be good clients. So I also promote myself a lot on social media obviously and this is huge. I would say 75% of the clients that I get find me through Instagram. They reach out to me directly or they call the salon specifically requesting me. And that's why I said I don't just rely on like the salon being well known and like getting clients through the salon. A lot of it is people I'm pulling in myself. So posting on Instagram as regularly as you can making sure that you take the time to get good photos of your work, try to get video, get pictures of the salon, get pictures of yourself, photos and video of you working that way when people come to your page they know who you are, they know what you look like, they kind of get a sense of what the experience is gonna be like when they come to you. All of the hair that you like doing the most, your specialty, what you're best at, post photos of that. And obviously I don't get pictures and videos of every single client I do but especially if it's a color transformation I definitely try my best to get as many pictures as I can and then that way I have a lot of content and I can post multiple pictures of the same person because it's hard especially when you're just starting out and you don't have a ton of clients. It's hard to have enough photos to post but like I'll repost old pictures of old clients even from like years ago because why not? It's still my work and then I make sure that I use local hashtags. I always like tag my location, the town I'm in or like a nearby town or the salon where I'm at since it's well known. And I always do like local hashtags like Wilmington, North Carolina hair stylist, Wilmington, North Carolina hair salon Wilmington, North Carolina, Baleage. I'll post a link in the description. I have a separate video where I go in a lot more detail about promoting yourself on Instagram and how to gain clients specifically through your Instagram page because there's a lot more to it. I used to ask new clients all the time like oh so like how'd you hear about me and they said they found me on Instagram I would ask like oh well like did I just come up or were you searching something because it is good to know like okay what's working how are people finding me I need to start doing that again and even for the clients that aren't directly finding you through Instagram if they just know about you because of the salon it's nice for them to have somewhere to look to see your portfolio though so like Instagram is just an absolute must nowadays and what I've done recently because for a while I was just telling people call the salon to book an appointment with me or fill out this form and then I'll reach out to you but I feel like there were just too many steps in between and then a lot of the times I would get people's form and then by the time I would call them it was too late and they already booked somewhere else so now what I did was I got a Google voice number and I have that in my bio on Instagram and that way people can just text me directly to that number and it comes straight to my phone without me having to actually share like my real personal cell phone number so that's like my business number and it's totally free to do and everything will just redirect to your phone calls, texts this way I also have a local number too which is nice and that has been a lot more helpful I have found that I've gotten more clients since doing that and I've had more success from that because people are able to reach out to me directly and then I can just get them scheduled right away they don't have to wait so there's no time for them to like go inquire with someone else and I encourage people to reach out to me directly because say they call the salon and then the receptionist is like oh well she doesn't technically have availability I don't know like if I'm scheduling my own people it just makes it easier because I can rework my schedule if I need to because right now my priority is I want people to come to me I want to get them in my chair obviously once I get to a point where I have a good steady clientele I'm gonna need to cool it and not be bending over backwards but in the beginning when you're trying to get people to come to you you gotta scoop them up because if they have to wait like a month or more to get in with you especially if you're new to the area like it depends person to person I guess but I feel like a lot of people are gonna be like oh well I really wanted to come in like this week so I'm just gonna look somewhere else sorry so that's how I've been getting people in the door but it's not enough to just get them in the door because like I said I want people that are gonna be coming back and staying loyal to me and then referring their friends and family to me so I just think about like what could make their experience above and beyond and more memorable I want to stand out compared to every other stylist they've been to in the past and that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with my skill or the actual hair that I do it's about how I make them feel so I'm always really thorough with my consultations I always like so many stylists I see they'll like stand behind their client and like look at them through the mirror I turn them and I make direct eye contact I talk about the price I let them know how much everything's gonna cost before we start I ask if they you know want a snack or anything to drink I'm always checking on them making sure that they're comfortable letting them know that like I haven't forgotten about them like even while they're processing I'll come back every so often and just check in like hey you still doing good I'll let them know like okay you still have like X amount of time left on your timer I always like check the water temperature first ask if they're comfortable make sure that I drape a towel around their neck so I'm not soaking their back at the shampoo bowl like things like that and those little things will stand out just always making them feel heard and important that I think is what's been helping me retain clients too I'm not perfect all the time I mean I'm not perfect ever but you know what I mean and I've had a few clients whose hair I've done and they didn't end up coming back whether it's because they ended up going to someone else or they just decided to stop getting their hair done I don't really know and if they don't already have your social media like if they didn't find you through Instagram then I would let them know like when you're taking after pictures I'd be like oh you know I'm gonna post these on my Instagram here's my handle if you want to you know check out the pictures when I post them or something like that and then I I don't know why but I just feel like clients who end up following you on Instagram just feel more connected to you and they're more likely to stay loyal to you because it feels like you're friends that's what I've been doing to rebuild my clientele and it's going well I mean obviously I'm not like super crazy booked like today I had two people and I'm not one of those stylists that is ever going to be working 12 hour shifts and I don't work with an assistant I don't double book you know so fully booked is going to look different for each stylist depending on how you like to work but we will all get there and let your clients know too like there's no shame in letting them know like hey I loved doing your hair I'm new to the area and I'm trying to grow my clientele so if you have any friends or co-workers family members that you know they're looking for a new hairstylist I'd love if you would send them my way give them some of your business cards or something you know let people help you because word of mouth is so powerful too anyway I need to go figure out what I'm gonna wear to this dinner and then I'm just gonna do a couple last minute things just make sure I have all my stuff ready to go because once I got back from dinner I'm just gonna load everything up in the car and like I said hopefully first thing in the morning I can hit the road okay I am gathering my stuff so my friend Hailey it's her sister's birthday dinner that I'm going to so I have Hailey's Christmas gift that I'm gonna bring to give to her because it's gonna be my last time seeing my friends before Christmas and then I always keep bags so I found just this plain brown bag to put her gift in and I'm gonna put green tissue paper so it's you know a little cute and festive cute so for Madison's gift she has bleached hair and it's really curly and dry and I know she likes Olaplex products so I had got a big PR package from them recently and they gave me a bunch of these adorable holiday gift sets so I was like uh perfect I'll give her one of these so this has all the styling products the number three treatment the number six leave-in the number seven oil and then the number nine serum and then I got her one of these tart maracuja juicy lip plump glosses and then I also got her a Starbucks gift card and then Hailey's gift is a dossier perfume I forget which one it is exactly but it's a dupe for a Chanel perfume and it just smells so expensive and bougie it's just so her and then as far as my outfit here I'll show you in the mirror don't mind the craziness behind me but the skirt from H&M and this cropped sweater from Abercrombie I just tucked it a little bit under my bra to give it like a little more shape and I'm gonna wear these heels with it but let's do the question of the day at the end of each vlog this vlog I am answering questions that you guys leave me in the comments of the previous vlog so if you have questions that you want me to answer in the next vlog leave them down below in the comments what do you hope for your future romantically like marriage, family, and do you want a home or a condo what would the ideal future look like white picket fence or something different and around what age is your hope thank you for all your teachings and hard work it's very appreciated you're pretty damn awesome if you ask me oh thank you so much sassy Sandra I would like to get married I don't know it was never something that seemed important to me my parents never married each other so I feel like what I was exposed to in that sense was more untraditional so I never envisioned like getting married and having a wedding and that kind of stuff but as I'm getting older the idea of being married to someone and like having a husband does seem appealing to me I am warming up to the idea of having kids for the longest time I said no I don't see myself with children but I feel like the more that people around me are having babies I'm like okay and the more I think about getting older and like having family traditions and I feel like once everybody grows up it's like I don't know it's kind of lonely and I feel like holidays just aren't the same when you're an adult and there aren't kids around in the family so I do think kids are in my future and yeah I would love to have a home I don't know where that's the thing like I try to not think about these things too much because there's just so much possibility and who knows like if you asked me five years ago if I knew that I'd be in Wilmington, North Carolina I would be so confused so you just never know okay I am gonna wrap up this vlog here I'm sorry if it was a little bit more boring I know I didn't really show or do that much today I am planning on vlogging when I'm in Pennsylvania so you guys will see a little more of my life up there which I'm really excited to share so stay tuned we're almost at the end but we still got a few more good videos left thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you tomorrow bye