The VIP Suite at IMAGE Studios with Matthew Landis

Eloise Blake & Talbott Anderson, Salon Suite Pros, on Crafting Confidence: The Art of Beauty and Connection

• IMAGE Studios • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Eloise Blake and Talbott Anderson share their inspiring journey of building a thriving salon business from the ground up. From the moment they took a leap of faith together, their partnership blossomed into a remarkable entrepreneurial adventure. Discover how their complementary strengths - Talbott's prowess in business management and marketing, paired with Eloise's creative vision and passion for beauty, laid the foundation for their salon suite success.

Step into their carefully curated studio, designed to emanate a serene and inviting ambiance that reflects their commitment to client comfort and confidence. With a focus on fostering lasting relationships, they prioritize client satisfaction above all else, leveraging social media and word-of-mouth marketing to steadily grow their clientele.


As they chart their course for the future, Eloise and Talbott envision continued growth while preserving the intimate and supportive atmosphere that defines their salon. While expansion is on the horizon, they remain dedicated to maintaining a small, family-oriented ethos, prioritizing quality service and personal connections. Their journey serves as a testament to the transformative power of passion, hard work, and unwavering support from those who uplift and inspire.

Matthew Landis:

Welcome to the VIP suite. The podcast exclusively designed for independent beauty, health and wellness professionals. Brought to you by image studios the luxury leader in the Salon Suite industry. I'm your host industry expert and certified business coach Matthew Landis. Each episode will bring you insightful interviews with solo entrepreneurs who forge their own path to greatness. From sharing inspiring stories of triumph to practical tips and strategies for growing your client base and building your brand. This is the place to thrive and take your business to the next level. Today joining me in the studio is Tabatha Anderson and Eloise Blake from 1113 Salon in Alpharetta, Georgia. Welcome to the podcast.

Eloise and Talbott:

Thank you.

Matthew Landis:

Tell me a little bit more about your business.

Eloise and Talbott:

Well, we started last year, Valentine's Day. So we're about to hit one year. It's been fantastic. So we've been here on image. So we've grown so much way more than we ever thought we can kind of we were best friends for the past couple of years, and kind of decided to just take a big leap of faith one day, and we met Adrian and Phil, and they were absolutely amazing. And we've kind of just been in love with it ever since. And we're so happy. I don't think we've ever been happier. Yeah. And how does the partnership work? She's the numbers. I don't know, there's all the businesses stuff. Yeah. And I do like all like the marketing, I enjoy the business side of things. I like handling, you know, all of our payroll and our inventory and making sure that everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. And then this one over here, I don't know how to take pictures. I don't know how to put together reels or do any of the marketing things. So really is perfect that we're just total opposites in that way. Because it brings such it's like two huge strengths that we have just like put together. And it just makes it 10 times better makes it work very and very smoothly. And we get along really well thankfully, too.

Talbott:

Because we're so different. I'm colorful, and she's the neutral girl - black cat and golden retriever.

Matthew Landis:

I just it's great. So we have a lot of pros throughout the country that share studios. Do you both work at the same time? Do you coordinate schedules? How does that work?

Eloise and Talbott:

We typically work at the same time. Yeah, we were able to make our double into a triple that we have three chairs and two goals. I will say at first, when we first started with only having one goal and having both work. And at the same time, we had to kind of block our days a little bit differently. Like she started earlier I started a little bit later, there were times where we were like, Can I use the like, you know, but now with the bigger space, it definitely helps to time and there's just more room now that there's more of us with more clients, it just kind of really helps it move a lot smoother. That's fantastic. So what made you decide to go independent and start your own business, always wanted to do it, it kind of was just like, so quick. And we just were like looking at each other. Like, we just didn't love the environment we were in. And then we I saw that image studios opened up and I was like, Oh, this looks so nice. So it kind of just went for a tour one day, I was just going for a tour planning to do it like a year. Yeah. And then we signed the lease. Like this is just meant to be we just felt it in our hearts and in our souls that we were just supposed to do this. And everything fell into place so perfectly where it was like, we'll tell you how to do it. And then again, with us being having the different strength. I think we've always wanted to do it by ourselves. But what have taken me a little bit longer. In fact, it's on my own with the marketing and same for our release. So I feel like now that we kind of both have those different things to bring into one. It just made it a lot easier and smoother. And we're just very blessed and thankful. And for this new journey that we are on artistic excited to see what's next. What would you say that you're most proud of? I mean, I'm just so proud of ourselves. Like we were able to grow so much like in six months, we were able to knock down a wall, hire another stylist hire another assistant. I mean, I mean, six months for two young stylist, I mean, she's 21 I'm 22 Definitely three, also like our clientele has grown tremendously and like our brand that I feel like we're very proud of what we've created. And like what we stand for, and what we believe in like, it's all just, I'm just proud. I'm just proud of us and what we've created. Tell me a little bit more about that when you said what we believe in and what we stand for. I think both of us just really want to make women feel beautiful and want them to come into a place where they know they will like leave feeling more confident and like more in love with their hair and themselves and they leave and the connections that we build with our clients are also so important. We love each one of our clients so much, and they're also so supportive of us and what we've done. And it's actually crazy to even see like how amazing these people that we spend time with are. Yeah. And it's crazy that how many people walk in and are already feel so comfortable. They're like, Oh my gosh, it's just so much better than like a big salon, I feel so much more comfortable or calm, you know, you can come in here and you can either talk to us for multiple hours, or you can just sit there and kind of have your own like, self care game where you don't really need to do much. And you can just relax. Like, we're just here for whatever our clients are here for. And we just want to make them happy and feel beautiful. And I'd say this, I swear every day, but like, we have the coolest job, we just get to make people feel pretty. And that's like the most amazing thing to me, I have to say, as I'm looking at your studio behind you, I'm really impressed with how beautiful and curated it is. It has a very zen like feeling and I'm looking at it on camera. I'm not even there to Merson, and I feel that from the space that you created, you have beautiful wall coverings, you have a gorgeous window. And of course your retail is looks beautifully curated and display just stocked. That's fantastic. Tell me a little bit about how the design of your space plays into your philosophy. I'm a very aesthetic person, and I like everything to be pretty, um, tech person. If it's not pretty, I'm not gonna buy it. If it's not aesthetic, I'm not gonna buy it. If this is better, but this one looks prettier. I'm probably gonna buy the prettier one. So I just wanted it to be pretty. I will say, yeah, have changed things around a lot. Like it didn't start out like this. There's a lot more paint. Yeah, because that's my favorite color. So now let me get rid of other things. She did. But it's okay. Because this is it's just very neutral. When you walk in here as calm, it's pretty. You just feel like a breath of fresh air. You're just like, wow, I'm getting my hair done. And this beautiful, because our old salon it was like dark. Yeah. So I think we wanted to be more like I want to be bright and like when you like walk in, it's like, like when people like walk into a salon and it's big and it's crowded and it's dark. It's just not relaxing anymore. So we wanted to create a relaxing environment and I think we've done a pretty good job.

Matthew Landis:

Well I can feel the energy between the two of you and the space itself. And there is does feel like there's a yin and a yang, and I love that even with the design of the space, you have these calm neutrals, and then adding the pink added a real pop of color and energy to it. So it seems like you balance each other out really well, thankfully, and that's so important when you're thinking about pairing up with somebody and going into business with somebody that can be really challenging. So do you have days when you snap? How do you handle those days when you're getting on each other's nerves?

Eloise and Talbott:

I think just since we know each other and we know how each other like we were we just know how to deal with each other and most the time it's just it goes by it goes so quick like we are alone for like five seconds and then we're gonna go like I love you and love you to work at and then it's fine because we love each other we support each other and at the end of the day we created something great so like why focus on or spend too much time fighting about it when there's so much to be thankful for? It's never anything like crazy important. Yeah. It was more just like her getting annoyed at me or me getting annoyed at her and we just have to like get over it.

Matthew Landis:

You understand each other and you give each other some grace? Yes. And give each other lots of grace sometimes.

Eloise and Talbott:

Some days more than others. Yeah. For sure. But you know we love each other so at the end of the day is perfect. Yeah, I feel like you've already answered this but what would you say for each of you separately would be your superpower probably just my eye for like vision what to do for like reels how do we like like I said like making things look aesthetic and eye catching and not even just like social media as just like the brand. Yeah, like just like we've done like photo shoots in the past in the IPs that she comes up with like her creative mind is something that I really admire about you and I wish that I had some creativity in my brain like that. I've always been a big math girl and I feel like if I didn't do hair, I would have been like a math or science teacher or something because that's like the other thing that I feel like I would have enjoyed that I did get to do here and get to you know, paint people's heads and like make them pretty. I also still get to do the other side of things and I even love like the formulating and like the chemistry behind all of that. I think it's super cool. I don't know and I my energy I feel like also is a big superpower of mine because people enjoy. It was always positive. Yeah, there's no negativity here.

Eloise:

So like a Disney princess.

Talbott:

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Matthew Landis:

So you are both very young, you haven't been in the industry that long. How did you build your clientele and your business?

Eloise and Talbott:

Social media and word of mouth. Yeah, a lot of word of mouth. As far as clients did come with us from our previous salon, thankfully, again, we took like a huge leap of faith. It was like something that was so scary and so risky. But sometimes, like the biggest risks turned out to be the most amazing things. And, you know, Sunday's were slower, like, that's normal. And, you know, especially for being new and like trying to get our name out there. But I feel like for what we've done in one year, like we've really grown tremendously. And since with us being so young, we both know that we still have lots of room to grow. And we also, like have lots more to learn, and lots more that we want to do. And we just want to keep going and keep getting better. So we just strive every day to really work on that. And I mean, we took some we've left flyers and stores and like put business cards, places that business cards, maybe. Yeah, you just have to put yourself out there really worked for it. And we're still working for like, our salon is the most important thing to us right now. Because we don't like again, we're young, we don't have crazy. One day, we'll have more priorities and more things on our plates. But right now currently, like our biggest thing is our salon. So we're just putting all of our time and energy into it. And it's really coming back full circles. Yeah. So it's we're very happy and love that you've worked at it every day.

Matthew Landis:

What I love is that you're proactive about it, because we have a lot of pros out there that are building their businesses, or rebuilding their businesses because they've moved from somewhere else. And I think that some people are can be a little bit passive in their marketing.

Eloise and Talbott:

When you're in a place like this, you don't have a salon advertising for you, you don't have the benefits of a salon, you don't have that here, you have to market for yourself, or you're going to fail. Market marketing is so important. It's so important, especially now with the way the world is like social media, it's insane how much of a part that all plays, it really rarely makes such a big difference. Like if you actually like are putting content out every single day, like people will see it the what they'll see the aesthetic of the place, how the appointments gonna want to get their hair done. I love that you're hitting the marketing from all fronts. It's not one thing, right? Yeah, I mean, we do paid ads multiple times a week to really get our work out there. We have like our target market all categorized and how we want our clients and the, like places in Georgia where we want it to reach to like, I mean, we go the full nine yards without reaching out to influencers to do like free hair. So obviously they'll make content and then post about us to get their followers see us sometimes you have to make those little sacrifices because it ends up paying off so much. It does sound like do we need to do free hair? Not really. But we want more people we want people to see the salon we want. And if you have time, yeah, yeah, if you don't have any clients, it's good to put that extra time when you aren't busy is a good opportunity to do something. And then if you do it that way, too, you don't have to make the video they're making the video for you that from the clients perspective also, which is nice, too. It's like a different point of view. So what advice would you have for somebody that is building their business, figure out your personal brand, stick with it, because if you're just going to be all over the place, nothing is going to ever be eye catching. People like to see a certain thing. And if it's just all over the place, it's not. So find your personal brand. market yourself good. Do hair, do it when you don't want to. You got to make those you know, especially when you're new and you're building, like sometimes you have to say yes to everything. You have to make the client happy at the end of the day. It just like continues. It's like a little it just keeps going and going and go. Yeah, it takes time. But you have to be dedicated and you have to be committed to it. And it will pay off at the end. I firmly believe that 100% I love that you say yes. The only thing we don't say yes to his minutes. Oh, yeah. We would mess it up. My brother won't even get it. Yeah, my boyfriend. He's complaining that one side is too long. So that's, that's our No, that's the one the only now but everything else.

Matthew Landis:

Well, and I love you and I have such a great outlook. And what I love is that you look at every client, it's an opportunity for building your business, not only building your business, but every client you're thinking about them, and how to make them happy and make their dreams come true. And it seems like you're really looking at each and every client in terms of a long term relationship.

Eloise and Talbott:

Yeah, for sure. Like I have clients that it's like they come after work and they'll bring us like they'll bring me dinner and we'll just sit there and eat dinner together. And then we'll do our like her hair because it's like 630 at night. I've had a long day and she's had a long day. And there's kind of two like we reach out about our tell us personal things like, oh my gosh, this happened to me, like, like I graduated or living on like, their special moment. Yeah, you get to like, live with them. And they're like, the especially they come get their hair done before they go do something exciting. Like I'm going on vacation next week, like you really get to be not only this person, hairstylist, but hopefully like a friend and someone that they can talk to and feel comfortable around. We love our clients. Like we're so thankful for them even like I'm making thankful for the clients I haven't even met yet. Like it's it's all just like insane, that we get to just like, talk to people and make people feel beautiful, and be an ear to like, listen to or not listen to if you don't feel like talking like our clients at the end of the day are the most important people to us. And we just love them with all of our hearts. This is a long term relationship with 100%. Let me ask you, what does success mean to you? I just wanted to come into work. I mean, and be happy and love, like going home and just being like, wow, like I loved every single person that I talked to today. No complaints. I mean, obviously, there's days where you're off and you know, not as normal as maybe. But I think at the end of the day, Success to me is not about the money. It's not about any of that it's more about my happiness, and that I love what I do. And the people that are waking up and being excited to go to work. Yeah, that is to say that means we made it in my opinion, you know, like we as even one day we'd like to call this to get bigger. And that's our dream. And what our clients and like, the sweetest messages like sometimes we'll Texas after, it'll be like, I just had like the worst day you made me feel like so amazing. Like my mom died. And you're just like, I love you. It's very rewarding. Yeah, I just feel like sores are our clients, but also to like, again, like I said, we want to get bigger. So we'll have more stylists and other like, we also want our success is them coming in here, and also liking where they're working and feeling comfortable in their environment that they go into every single day. And like we have an assistant we're training her and that's very successful to me. Yeah. Are you Mother, I'm trying to train her to be better than me. Yeah, we want her to be better than both of us. I want every stylist in a stage walk in there to eventually be better than me. And she has the best work ethic. We're so thankful and blessed that we have her and we can't wait to see her grow. But I think that is our like what success is for us for sure. I think this is a really good question for a lot of our pros that are listening to this podcast, how does working with an assistant help you and how does that work for you? So what Eloise and I came from is we both were assistants of the owner had her own salon, he kind of already had an idea of what assistant life was like and I feel like most hair stylists do, because that's kind of where you begin. But we learned so much and we're thankful for that experience. No 100% I think coming into our own thing, we wanted to do things a tiny bit differently with our assistant I will say like especially with the there being three of us like us being busy all day, things get behind like her with the extra set of hands really helps everything kind of stay moving and stay like clean and then she also we've been getting her to like she's in hair school. So we've been getting her to help us blow dry or simple shampoo us and blow us out for extra practice and certain things like that. So it definitely is a little especially because it's a smaller space, something that you have to get used to and it takes some getting used to. But at the end of the day like it was probably the best decision we made was to hire an assistant for sure is like our other like she's like our brain like she's like she's in our heads and she knows exactly what we're about to do next to have a poker but then we also always check on her because we know the assistant life so we're like, are you good? Like do you need anything? Like are we work like are you working too much do you need a day like do you want to work more like we're always checking in with her and telling her how much you appreciate her because the assistant life I feel like sometimes sometimes you feel underappreciated when you really are such an important role. So we just try and tell her every I think I tell them I have I told you today how much I appreciate you. She's like no you haven't but I love you and I love you too. That gratitude goes a long way. Really that's 100% We came from a place where you never heard it Yeah, so I definitely know like I'm sure like are they probably appreciated us they just didn't say the words but like for me words are so important. So I say them to Sophie I swear like a million times money is important, but thank you is equally more than 100%

Matthew Landis:

I worked with an assistant for probably 20 years because what I realized early on in my career is that in order for me to make other people happy, I have to be happy. Having that extra set of hands to do some of the things that I maybe don't want to do, or to balance out some of the harder things like shampooing and blow drying, really make a big difference. It was worth the investment to me. So let me ask you a practical question. How do you pay her? Hourly?

Eloise and Talbott:

Yeah, we do care hourly. And we also she gets tips. And we definitely give her lots of like little treats for thank yous and like little goodies and gifts. And you know, again, we are new. So we don't like it's not like we're big. And we weren't super bummed when she first started. So it definitely was something that we had to like really agree on. Because those extra funds like, do we need that extra help? So it's worth it, but at the same time, like do, can we just make it work by ourselves, we definitely have to come to that decision. And also, we did end up giving her a raise, because she's just too hard of a worker, and she's too amazing. I think it was important. And she really does work so hard for us. And we're so blessed that we have her we also just constantly are like gifting her things to show our appreciation. Because again, like we don't, we're still new or so growing. We're trying to like be frugal, sometimes with money because we're trying to save up for things and we go to Vegas every year for a hair convention for our girls, like we'll pay for like the hotel and like dinners and we'll even do that in Georgia and like education, things we'll pay for when we can we try and go the extra mile since we I wish we could pair like a million dollars. You know, but unfortunately we can't right now one day, we're just so thankful for her. But yeah, that's kind of what we do for Sophie, that's incredible, because I think a lot of people want an assistant are thinking about an assistant and wondering if they can afford it. Yeah. And I think you know, it helps that there's two of you.

Matthew Landis:

For me, I also I double booked, I didn't like stopping or slowing down or taking a rest. So it helped to have that extra help. Yeah, but I think having an assistant can also be built into the price of the service.

Eloise and Talbott:

Yeah, it probably could be we haven't thought about that way. But why don't you percent that would make sense.

Matthew Landis:

So a lot of times for me whenever I had something that I wanted to do, and it was gonna cost a little money, I thought, Well, I'm not actually the one paying for it. I'm gonna pass this cost along to the client. And most of the time, they were happy to pay for it. I even had one client say, Oh, thank you so much for having your assistant, shampoo my hair. And I thought what she said, I know you don't love it, and she does such a good job. Okay, well, this is definitely worth it.

Eloise and Talbott:

Yeah, 100%. And I also will say, if you're like worried about like, if other people are worried about hiring an assistant also, like, most of the time, you can find someone who's in school, they're wanting to learn, they're eager to learn, you know, they get to come in, and it's a job at the end of the day, but also it's more education for them. So really, they're learning and getting paid at the same time. And Sophie was like, so cool with us in the beginning about that, because we were like, we wish we could give you more like, and don't get me wrong, it's not like low I don't even think $5. She was like, I'm just thankful to be like learning from you guys. Like all take whatever, like, I want to be in the industry. I want to get my hands in here, I want to learn from you. And I feel like that also makes a big difference. Like she more wants to be behind the chair and grow her brand and grow her business like her parents diet like you know, so I think at the end of the day, she's more thankful for what we provide to her with our clients. And she can ask us questions and like, we'll answer them to the best of our abilities and it's a job but it's also like her learning every day. And you know, getting your foot in the door is everything. When you're in school or when you're starting out. You're like how do I want to work at the best salons and whenever the best people I want to have the best clients. How do I start? Or whelming? Yeah, cuz especially where we are. There's so many salons.

Matthew Landis:

What other parts of your life bring you joy and happiness?

Eloise and Talbott:

Good question. Definitely my family. I think our moms bring us so much joy and happiness. Let's just say probably my mom because my life is my work. Like I don't do anything. Like I don't like him. All my friends are here. Yeah. So yeah, definitely. Moms bring us so much happiness and like love and they're our biggest supporters and family friends. But I would say also the same like I'm pretty much here. And you know, it's our first year it was hard to work hard. Now you have to work hard like one day like I'm gonna have kids and like that will be what brings me even more happiness right now. Lee I would say family friends and then work is just like fun. And I love it. It makes me happy when I'm not working on board. So I tend to just always work one day it won't be like that, though. Again. We're young we're working hard. Now. So good when we first open to work the hardest and the beginning, because we want to be available for everyone we want to build. And so that's kind of where our heads right now, what do you agree to with that, but we're happy about it.

Matthew Landis:

I love that you have that passion and energy and excitement. It shows how much you love what you do. You love your business, you're thinking about it all the time you incorporate the things that you love into what you do and how you earn a living. And I think that's fantastic. My last question was actually what is the future look like for you? But I feel like maybe you've already answered that. But maybe you can elaborate a little bit more

Eloise and Talbott:

Well, you just want to keep getting bigger. And if you just growing the brand, get our name out there, just not too big. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of big, like not not it for me, I'm still want to keep it small family like family oriented, like, all very close to each other, all support each other. We don't know when that's gonna be a thing. We're kind of just taking it day by day, because we know no matter what, like everything's gonna work out the way that it's supposed to. And we both firmly just have like lots and lots of faith that you know that it's gonna be good. So that is the goal for one day when I don't know but whenever.

Matthew Landis:

I love that, and I love that you said keep it small, because I will tell you, I used to own a salon with about 70 employees can't even imagine we came for a big spa, there were four locations and we were all hopping everywhere. And it's just hectic.

Eloise and Talbott:

More people more problems. And I'm not a big fan of problem where we just want to keep it littler still, like have room to grow one day and you know, who knows where things are gonna go. But definitely keep it a little smaller for a while for sure. A big small salon. Yeah.

Matthew Landis:

Well, I'll tell you about when I got smaller and I opened a studio and I I made more money, a lot more money. And I had a lot less stress. I was just happier. Yeah, exactly. So I am so happy for the two of you. I just want to thank you so much for spending time with me and being a part of this podcast.

Eloise and Talbott:

thank you so much for having me really enjoyed it. Yes, so much. Thank you.

Matthew Landis:

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The VIP suite. I'm Matthew Landis and I hope you found the insights and inspiration share today truly valuable for your journey as a solo entrepreneur, and independent beauty, health or wellness professionals. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at image Studios 360 And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to the VIP suite on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an opportunity to connect with our vibrant community and to discover more incredible stories and strategies. We love hearing from our listeners. So if you have any questions, topic suggestions or want to share your own success story, feel free to reach out to me at Matthew at image studios three sixty.com Remember dear listener, you are the heartbeat of the beauty, health and wellness industry. Your dedication and passion make the world a better place one client at a time keep shining, keep growing and keep making a positive impact. We'll be back with more engaging conversations and valuable content in our next episode. Until then take care stay inspired and continue to create your own VIP suite. For more information about becoming a part of the image studios luxury Salon Suite community, visit our website at image studios three sixty.com