We recently connected with Susan Wos and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Susan, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I believe being resilient is one of the most important aspects of being a successful entrepreneur. When you start a new business, there are typically a host challenges and issues you face as a business owner. The challenges I faced were massive, however I chose to adapt, learn and overcome.
When I started Salonspa Connection I had almost zero tech skills, yet I was in a digital business. I started my business with the bootstrapping method, so every penny I spent, mattered. Once I realized how much I needed to be doing online to be successful, I began to slowly learn about tech.
I learned to pay for tech services as needed and learn to do as much as possible. I was a terrible student in high schools and never finished college. This put me at a disadvantage and hindered my abilities for learning as fast as my peers who were more adept in applying learned skills into practice.
The survival of my business meant I needed to either pay for or learn and get comfortable with technology. 5 years later, my online business has given me the opportunity to overcome the overwhelm of new programs and provided a wide variety of skills. Now when I am faced with needing to learn new technology, I dive into the deep end!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a 28 year veteran hair stylist and former salon owner from Kansas City, who has worked in every type of salon you can imagine! The salon industry is so different than other industry, filled with creatives who impact lives on a daily basis.
We have several industry wide issues that gnawed away at my problem solving nature. I started Salonspa Connection in effort to help resolve the employment and booth rental problems we face, offering advice to salon pros who were lost in their search for a great salon fit. I personally matched hundreds of hair stylists, nail technicians, estheticians, barbers and massage therapists to employers across Kansas City .
In 2019 we added the ability for salon owners to buy job listings rather than only offering the personal recruiting service. As we grew, it made sense to position ourselves as a more comprehensive resource, not just a job site.
While I have heavily focused on our recruitment offerings, in early 2020 we added the salons for sale feature to our services to serve a huge need. Selling salon businesses was never in my business plans but I kept seeing buyers and sellers miss each other, online. I can only see a solvable problem so many times before I take action. Now our salon businesses for sale is just as popular as our recruitment.
To be successful in the salon industry, you almost always have to be associated with a product company or large corporation. This is not the path I have taken, although the support of a large company is tempting at times. People trust us because we remain in the middle- a non brand affiliated company offering high value content and services they cannot get, anywhere else.
Staying the course of an independent company, we launched hiring & matchmaking employment software, Enlightened Hire, in 2022. Enlightened Hire allowed me to systemize and organize the personal hiring requests from salon professionals. The software also allowed us to grow across the US and now we are expanding into Canada.
We recently added a new free resource- a searchable list of every salon coach, consultant and mentor in the world. This was challenging! These people were absolutely scattered across social media and search engines. The new feature is an example of where we are headed- the ultimate comprehensive salon industry resource.
What is next for Salonspa Connection? I would like to continue to grow our paid services as well as add as much free content and resources as we can manage.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I believe my never give up attitude, objectiveness and desire to truly help people have been why we are still here, today.
The best advice I could give someone who is starting their entrepreneurial journey is to start small and learn everything you can about your customer. Selling something is difficult, especially when you don’t have familiarity with your audience.
As an introvert, it has been painful to put myself out there and market using my face and my name. It has also been the reason we have been successful- people want a face and personalization to any company, product or brand.
Positioning yourself as an opinionated founder can pay off if you are in political or editorial niches. Otherwise, opinions can get you into trouble and tarnish a growing brand. Try to stay objective and treat everyone with kindness!
Learning how to help people is a life long journey. Understanding your target customer’s pain points, providing a ton of value and focusing on where they live, online will pave the path to monetizing your efforts.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
I like smart people and I surround myself with experts who are smarter than me in their fields. It would be hard to pick one person who has helped me the most- the most helpful people are a collective of friends, family, business associates and salon clients.
You can learn something from most everyone, I take the nuggets of wisdom I receive from the people I surround myself with, and implement that knowledge into a variety of business strategies.
Early on in my business I would say Kevin Oldham from Diffactory in Lee’s Summit, MO was the most impactful person in my business. He is a marketing genius and gave a very new business a ton of insight and ideas for years to come.
Most recently, Ali Alizada of the Code Giant in Vancouver, Canada has been the most impactful for my business. Ali is patient and extremely knowledgeable in software development and has taught me to do things I never thought I would be able to tackle.
Jeff Potts from 2020 Creative has been my WordPress developer for Salonspa Connection’s website since 2020. His patience and willingness to teach a non-tech person like me has been both impactful and motivating to learn all I can about WordPress.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://salonspaconnection.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salonspaconnection/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/salonspaconnection
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanwos/
