QUITTING MY 9 5 TO START A BRIDAL HAIR BUSINESS (for millennial hairstylists)

It's a great day to create something beautiful. Welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, welcome. I'm so happy you're here. I am Marissa and I help bridal hairstylists and makeup artists with business tips, strategies, Instagram hacks. Yes, yes, yes. So you can build a business you love and fill your inbox with your dream bridal clients. So if you are someone who is unfamiliar with my journey, I actually came from a corporate job. I used to work a 9 to 5. So for today's video, if you are somebody who maybe you're working in the salon right now or maybe you are at a corporate 9 to 5, I also was in the salon as well. Who really has a passion for bridal hair or bridal makeup or the bridal beauty business in general. And you're like, I really want to take this full time. Stay tuned for today's video because I'm going to be sharing with you guys exactly how I was able to leave my 9 to 5 job tips on exactly what I did to be able to transition over fully to my bridal business. Some things that I did that maybe I want to do to today and different things that I might implement if I was to leave my 9 to 5 job today, knowing what I know from leaving back in 2018. So if you're somebody who wants to leave this on or your corporate job and go full time with your bridal beauty business, but you're not exactly sure how, then keep on watching. Okay. Before I dive into exactly what I would change if I was to quit my 9 to 5 today to start my bridal beauty business full time, Let me give you guys a little bit of background. If you don't know my journey. Yes, I did start out in a salon. I used to work at a salon. I started out when I was 15, shampooing. Oh, my God, the days of shampooing. If you know, you know, I was assisting. I was doing all the things, trying to build my career, but it just didn't feel like it was happening for me. And I totally fell out of love with hair color. So. So I actually worked in the salon from 2005 until 2013. In 2013, I was like, listen, I've had enough. I just want where I can sit down. And I thought that I totally was like, not cut out to be a hairstylist because I didn't love doing cuts in color. I just wasn't passionate about it anymore. So I took a corporate job and I did medical billing. Medical billing. It's really not fun. But I had a desk job. That's what I did. So in 2013, I got that desk job and I worked at that job from 2013 until 2018. So for about five years I worked at that job. And it was great. At the time I thought it was so cool. I worked in Center City, but also when I started working there, I started side hustling for a bridal hair and makeup team that was in Philadelphia, in Center City at the time. So I would all during the week, Monday through Friday, I would work my desk job. And then on the weekends, sometimes maybe a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, pretty much always Saturdays, I would work weddings and work for the bridal hair and makeup team that I was hired on. I wound up loving it so much that in 2016 I started my own business and I stopped working for the bridal team and I think about, like 2016 somewhere around there. So this actually leads me to my first point for what I would do. Actually, what I did that I thought was pretty helpful and I would probably do the same thing today was use my bridal business as a side hustle in order to have income to pay off any debts and reduce my monthly bills. So what I actually did, because I was working my corporate 9 to 5 job, I had that income, that steady income, so that would pay my bills. And all the money that I was making from doing weddings on Saturdays was my side money. It was my side hustle. So that was just an additional income. So what I actually did, before I even thought about leaving my nine to five, all of that additional income, instead of buying, like fancy things and going out, like, yeah, I would use it for some fun things like vacations and things like that. But what I actually did was I started paying huge chunks of money towards my cosmetology loan, towards my car loan, and also any credit card debt. So that's the number one thing I think you would want to do. And that was super helpful for me. Because when you reduce your monthly income, what you have to realize is that when you quit your 9 to 5 or you leave the salon, that income leaves with it, right? So you need to make up for that income. And something that's really going to help and take that fear out of, like losing that income is reducing your monthly bills. So the easiest thing to transition into that and to supplement that income is to reduce your bills while you can. So if you are in a position right now where, you know, wedding money is maybe your side hustle money, use that money to pay down any Debts that you have any credit cards, car loans, cosmetology loan. My cosmetology loan. Sheesh. That was a lot of money. But you know, I paid all that off before I even thought of leaving my 9 to 5 job first. And thinking back on it today, that is still something that I would implement and want to do first before I even thought of leaving my 9 to 5 or my salon job in order to build my bridal beauty business and take it full time. However, something that I didn't do, that you might want to do before you leave your nine to five, and that I wish I did before I left my 9 to 5 and started my bridal business full time, is you want to reverse engineer your monthly income needs for your business as well as for your personal. So what I mean is, you want to write down all your expenses for your personal as well as all of your current business expenses for your bridal beauty business before you lose that income, that steady income from your 9 to 5 or salon job. A mistake that I made before I left my 9 to 5 was not reverse engineering my monthly income that I needed once I lost that 9 to 5 job. So for you, it can look something like writing out all your personal and business expenses that you have right now within your bridal beauty business and figuring out how much per month you need to make in order to sustain that. So once you lose that income from your salon job or your 9 to 5 job, you know exactly how much money you need to bring in per month in order to pay all of your personal and business expenses. Okay? So by now you probably have reverse engineered how much income you're going to need to make once you lose that corporate job or salon job. And you've also figured out exactly how you can reduce your monthly expenses and possibly if you're able to start using the wedding money you're making now to pay down any debts that you have at this point, you're probably so fed up. Like when I tell you when I was doing things like this, when my corporate job, thinking about leaving and writing out a business plan and things like that, I was so fed up with being there, like, I didn't even want to show up to work, but I was so excited about starting my business, and that's probably exactly where you're at right now. You are fed up with either the salon or your corporate job, whatever that 9 to 5 looks like for you. And you are like, I am ready to take this bridal business full time. Let me just hop in. I am so excited. I can do this. I am ready. Before we hop in, something that I wish I knew is something called the Dunning Kruger effect. So what this exactly is, is it's like when you're going into a new situation and you're unaware of all the things that you really need to know in order to build a business. So you're on this super high right now. You are so excited, your confidence is all the way up here and you feel amazing. And once you start working on it and once you're in it full time, you start becoming aware of, of these things that you didn't know. So you start to dip down, your confidence starts to go down into like this valley of despair because now you are aware of all of the things that you didn't know, all the things that take skills, systems, all of the things in order to really build and scale a business. And this is usually where people fail and plateau. So when I was starting out my business, when I quit my 9 to 5, this happened to me probably really soon. It happened to me about a month after I started trying to take those steps like getting a business license, trying to find a studio, a place to house my trials and trying to really build out my client experience and build out my brand. But a lot of this I was so unaware of. I didn't know the steps to take and how hard it was actually going to be and how much work you actually had to put into it. But I felt like now I have all this extra free time, it'll be fine. But what I want you to know is that once you leave that 9 to 5 job and you're on that high, you will come down and there's going to be some things that you don't know. And that's okay. When you hit that feeling and when you feel like you're in a valley of despair because you're just basically unaware of these building blocks within a business. Don't give up, push through, push past, figure it out and just know that it takes a lot more than you think to build a sustainable, successful, profitable business. And don't worry about it. I believe in you and I believe you can do this. I really want you to push past it. And just remember of the Dunning Kruger effect. It's proven in psychology that this happens to majority of people, especially when you're starting a business. Had I known this, I would have been able to mentally feel better and reassured that, oh, okay, this is normal. So I just want you to know as well that it is normal. If I was to leave my 9 to 5 job today, one of the number one things and places I would start is verifying my client experience. So what exactly I mean is verifying that I can get proven results for my clients with their hairstyles. So what I should have done was get proven results from my client. So what I was doing is I was doing their hair, I was doing their makeup, but I wasn't really taking into account client experience or what I can improve with their hairstyles or what I could improve with their makeup. So I didn't really have like a proven roadmap or a signature style at the time. So that is something that I should have been working on while I still had my 9 to 5, which is proving that I can get the same results for any hair type, texture, density, all those things. What I didn't do was really look at what I could improve, what was working and what wasn't working. So I wasn't thinking analytically within my business. And what I. And I don't want that for you. So something you can do is after you have a bridal hair preview appointment or a bridal makeup preview appointment, or after you do a wedding, think to yourself, was everybody happy with my service? Was the hairstyle I created amazing? Maybe rate yourself. Was it good? Better? Best? Could you do better? Are there things you can improve on with your techniques? Really thinking that way will help you to improve your skills, your techniques, as well as your client experience. Another way you can do this is by collecting a lot of feedback, a lot of testimonials from all of your clients, whether that's at their hair preview or makeup preview appointments, or whether that's on the wedding day. When you collect feedback from your clients, you're able to know exactly what you need to improve on in the client experience to have them want to tell all their friends and refer you out to everyone. All right, guys, I know you know this one was coming. What I would do differently is I would start implementing a serious Instagram strategy. I wasn't implementing an Instagram strategy before I left my 9 to 5 my mindset back then. I would, I would post here and there, but it wasn't consistent. I had no strategy, I had no marketing plan in place. I just thought, oh, I'll sign up for Wedding Wire and then not and brides will come to me. You know, if you saw this video, that was not a great idea. So what I should have done differently is hone in and be consistent with Instagram before I left that nine to five or before you leave that salon job. Because my mindset was, oh, I don't really have the time to do it right now, but once I leave my 9 to 5 job, I'm going to have all this extra free time. So I'm going to really nail down and focus on an Instagram strategy. Well, guess what? It didn't happen because I let my mindset of I'm not good enough. My confidence wasn't super high at the time within my hair or makeup skills, so I didn't even want to show up on social media. However, if I had started and got all that out of the way before I left my job, I would be consistently posting and I would already have a plan in place. So for you, what you can do is just start working on an Instagram strategy. Just start dipping your toes in that water. Start posting consistently for 30 days, whether that's three times a week, four times a week, whatever that is, just start being consistent before you want to quit your job and take your bridal business full time. That way it's more, more of a habit that you've already created instead of a new habit that you need to create. The next thing that I wish I implemented before I quit my corporate job was starting to collect data. So there's three types of data that I believe are super important in this stage of your business. To start collecting. You don't want to overwhelm yourself and go head dive first into all the data because it's very manual and it's not necessary for every point of your business. So right now, in the beginning stages of your bridal business, as you're bootstrapping your way up, there's three pieces of data that are really important for you to start collecting right now. So the number one is client feedback, number two, Instagram insights. And number three is lead generation. So client feedback. You want to be collecting feedback from all of your clients appointments that you have. So you want to be getting reviews from them after their bridal hair previews or makeup previews or after the wedding day. You want to reach out to them. If you haven't done so yet, that's okay. There's still time that you can reach out. Even if it's months later, still reach out to them and try to get some feedback on how their experience was for you. So that way you know how to improve and make it better for each client every time. Also, when you're getting that feedback from clients, you're able to repurpose that and use it on your website, use it on your Instagram. So that way future clients who are finding you on Instagram or your website and see that other people have trusted you and it helps them trust you in order to want to book with you. The second piece of data is the Instagram analytics. So you want to be tracking your Instagram analytics, your data and always be reviewing your insights. So, so if you're posting consistently and you have a strategy, you've posted for 30 days. After those 30 days, review your insights and see what was working best for you. Whatever wasn't working for you, stop doing those posts. So if you were posting all different kinds of posts, let's just say reels, carousels, single photo posts, and maybe you see after checking that data that hey, single photo posts actually weren't performing really well for me. Nobody was really looking at it and I didn't really get a high engagement or a high reach on it. Then, you know, I won't post those in the future. Maybe I'll double down on my carousels or my room. And then the third type of data that you want to be collecting at this stage of your business is lead generation. So you want to do something as simple as a Google spreadsheet. And every time someone inquires with you, you want to track it on this spreadsheet. So you want to track their name, you want to track where they came from, how are they finding you? So that way you know what to double down on. Are they finding you on Instagram? Are they finding you through referral? You want to know those things, you want to know when they're inquiring with you and things like that. This will help you get a better bird's eye view into your business. So that way you can really fast tracking your success. Once you take your bridal business full time, I know firsthand exactly how scary it can be when you're leaving your secure, safe 9 to 5 or salon job to start your bridal beauty business full time. So I hope these tips were helpful for you and if they were, leave me some feedback in the comments. And also if you are in this stage of your business, be sure to head over to my YouTube profile because I have tons of helpful videos to help you within your business. As always, it's a great day to create something beautiful. I hope you guys have a great week and I will see you in the next one. Bye guys.