How to build your business in a small town as a hairstylist or esthetician
Casey Taylor lives in Lindell, East Texas and has been a hairstylist for 9 years, mainly in her small hometown.
Casey has “beat the odds” in terms of pulling off something that is admittedly an uphill climb: becoming a well-known hairstylist in a small town.
In fact, when Casey was first starting, she was told by her instructor and mentor that she probably wouldn't be able to build a hairstyling career in her hometown.
Thankfully, she proved her mentor wrong.
Casey has created her dream career and now her passion is to show other small-town stylists how they can do the same without having to move.
Today’s blog is for you if you’re a beauty professional in any capacity trying to build your books in a small town. Nail tech, waxing expert, hairstylist, or spray tanner, the lessons Casey shared with me on becoming a successful beauty professional in a small town are easy, intuitive, and will warm your heart whichever avenue of the beauty business you’re in!
How to make your beauty business stand out without an expensive education or tons of big-city experience
Casey says there’s a mentality of small towns that is, frankly, sometimes kind of true: that there’s a bank, a church, and a hair salon at every corner.
But something that Casey has proven wrong about small-town clients is that they’re not willing to pay “big city” prices for premium hair services.
She started off in a bigger city on commission for about 9 months after graduating. One gig was at a big chain, and the other was a smaller, locally owned salon. She learned a lot during that time, but she hated the travel time. She wanted to work in her hometown and “do [her] career differently.”
She said right off the bat that she decided she would never become known as a “bargain stylist, doing roller sets and haircuts all day long.”
She loved coloring and putting in extensions so she wanted to market to those clientele and to show off her value as a hairstylist.
However, considering that Casey wasn’t taught how to balayage, or about color theory, she did have to upskill herself quickly in order to be able to justify higher prices. She learned on the job and from peers and competitors around her.
While she was intimidated at the beginning as she didn’t have a huge skillset to show off, she eagerly jumped right in and began learning on the job, with the understanding that great customer service can often outshine a lack of experience.
“It honestly has a lot more to do with how you show up as an individual, the care you give to each client. Paying attention to those little details - showing up on time, offering them water, not rushing them in and out. Asking them how they want their hair done. I think that kind of translated more than my talent necessarily in the beginning and set me apart a lot.”
Casey wanted to focus on the quality of her service, rather than serving a large number of clients quickly. This approach worked out well for her:
“I heard several complaints from clients when they would sit in my chair, [saying] ‘My last stylist, they just kind of did whatever they wanted. They never listened to me. They just did what they wanted to do.’ I just listened to people [and] I think that added an extreme amount of value to the service because they want[ed] to feel seen and heard.”
How to advertise your beauty business in a small town with a small budget
Despite common advice for beauty professionals (especially these days), Casey didn’t build her following on Instagram - and things were significantly different when it came to creating a following on social media 9 years ago.
“Back then, social media was totally different. Instagram wasn’t super popular in my small town. I didn’t use mine all that much. I didn’t use it to market my business because I knew no one in my small town was looking there for hair.”
Casey instead leaned into the most popular social media platform at that time (and still reigning champ for businesses of all types): Facebook.
“Facebook was king in my small town, and still is. I was deep into those ‘mom groups’, garage swap-sale groups. I know they get a bad rap for seeming like a place for ‘bargain hunters’, but they were so valuable and were the biggest tool I used for building my clientele initially.”
Casey said that she didn’t advertise sales or promotions, but rather did something I talk about as one of the most valuable tools in any beauty professional’s marketing arsenal: showing up as your authentic self!
“I would just post a picture of myself, pictures of hair I had done, and basically said, ‘I’m a hairstylist that is newer to the area. I would love to have you in my chair, here’s what I’m offering.”
She also was very smart about packaging her offers in a way that would be beneficial for both her business and her clients.
“I’d [post], ‘All of my color services come with a complimentary haircut and deep conditioning treatment!’ and sell it as a package rather than ‘a la carte’ services.”
“I think showing up in those groups as a real person helped me a lot, because it got my face out in the community and showed them the value I had,” Casey explains.
Casey says that as Instagram has grown in popularity, so has her following…but she still finds Facebook to be the best platform for encouraging a “community feeling”, especially when it comes to small towns - though she also says that no two towns are alike in that way.
“I think that everyone’s situation is going to be different when it comes to [building your business on social media], but I do find that small towns tend to take longer to jump on trends, and they’re all about community. Facebook is a little more interactive as far as the community aspect, vs Instagram or TikTok.”
How to do great word-of-mouth marketing in your small town as a hairstylist
Casey says that when it comes to gathering valuable word-of-mouth marketing, she again uses her best asset: her amazing personality and longing to be a part of the community:
“I tried to show up to all the different local things going on. I will go to the football games on Friday nights because those are huge in our small town, it's all about football.
Just really pouring into the community that way and showing up. It’s all about getting seen so that people can learn to trust you.”
When Casey would attend local events, she would sometimes set up booths or info stands, but also would just spend lots of time chatting to the locals to make sure they knew who she was.
“I think it's just about having conversations with people. There have been some local festivals where I've done braid bars, where I'll set up a booth - do some braids, some hair tinsel, maybe some hair colored sprays, stuff like that. I might team up with a local dance team that wants to do a fundraiser and those girls will all get their hair braided and walk around and then everybody's like, oh, your hair's really cool. Where did you get that done?”
Casey knows that word-of-mouth often begins in families, so she counts on that.
“Although I’m not necessarily marketing my clientele to these young girls, they all have moms, they all have an aunt, they all have an older sister or a cousin.”
Leaning into the “smalltown mentality” to help your beauty business grow
Casey knows that small towns tend to have a close-knit, “set in stone” way about them, and that it can be hard to break on to the scene as a newbie. She’s learned valuable lessons about becoming well known and trusted in her hometown:
“I think there is this clique-ish mentality in small towns that's really unique to overcome. If you can get somebody who is like a small town celebrity in your chair, it can go a long way. But of course, also market to your ideal client.”
Small towns usually contain a whole lot of big hearts and people who look out for each other like family, so Casey’s other suggestion is to lean into that.
“I feel like small towns are just a lot more personal, [so it’s] a lot more about connecting with people on a personal level. It doesn't always have to be like, ‘Well I'm here because I'm trying to market my business, but I'm here because I care about people. They value that a lot.”
Don’t let the opinions of other people keep you from building your smalltown dream beauty business
In the past, I’ve heard from students who are terrified to post on social media for fear of what the “small town gossips” will have to say about them. I wanted to know from Casey, how did she overcome this and continue to scale up?
“I have definitely had issues with other hairstylists saying things behind my back, like, ‘Who does she think she is to charge those prices here?’ Or, ‘I can't believe she's not going to do haircuts anymore and she's only doing color. And why does she think she can offer these extensions here? It’s never gonna work.’ But what I've found is that anyone who does have something negative to say (which I don't think is really that many people), it's really a ‘Them’ problem and not a ‘You’ problem. It's more about their limiting beliefs and their jealousy that they aren't doing the same thing in their business.”
In fact, Casey says, she’s only ever had really positive feedback about what she shares with her community, at least from her clients.
“I have never had clients say stuff about what I'm posting. They are only excited to see my post.
Even posting stuff for other hair stylists of my education, I have so many of my clients that are invested in those posts and they love seeing them!”
“It's funny because they'll come back after being somewhere, hearing something (because everything in a small town gets around.) They'll say, ‘This stylist said, Casey's just bougie and her prices are too high. Meanwhile, that same client that's telling me about this is sitting in my chair, paying my prices and you know, cheering me on for everything that I'm doing.”
Casey ultimately knows that her trajectory and success in her hometown have been fueled by a deep belief in herself, and knowing she could do it differently than it’s been done before.
“It can be very scary. I had raised my price higher than the salon owner when I was booth renting initially! It’s just [having] self-confidence and doing things differently than everyone else has been doing it forever. There has to be a first somewhere. Being able to stand out that way is a tool that you can use to your advantage and something that can be really rewarding if you push past that fear and actually utilize it and go for it.”
You can connect with Casey at https://caseytaylorstylist.com, where she runs the Small Town Stylist Collective as an educator and group coach.
