March 19, 2020
Today we got the pleasure of welcoming the incredible Jamie Dana on the podcast! Jamie is a hair stylist and educator in the hair industry specializing in teaching other hairstylists how to use Instagram to grow their businesses. Jamie thrives from helping stylists see their full potential not only as a hairstylist, but also as a business owner. She loves to connect with others in the hair industry and her goal is to create a community full of like-minded stylists who encourage and inspire each other to work hard, build their dreams, and live a life they absolutely love.
Jamie specifically teaches on business and instagram for hair stylists; however, everything she talks about in today’s episode is PURE FIRE for ANY business owner. Jamie has done an exceptional job at creating a very niche market and growing her instagram to a whopping 176,000 followers and counting. In this episode Jamie talks about her top 3 tips for growing your following, her brilliant hack she does on her Instagram highlights (we’re IMMEDIATELY going to implement on our own feeds), and the biggest mistakes people are currently making on their Instagram bios and what she recommends to change. Her tips are SO tangible you can literally go do them when you finish listening to this episode. We touch on imposter syndrome when you become an educator, how to stay balanced when you’re juggling all the balls, and navigating the boundaries of saying no in your business. Let’s dive on in!
Growing up, Jamie was homeschooled and her mom noticed that she was creative in everything she did and encouraged her to go to beauty school. She graduated high school at the age of 16 and went right into beauty school, graduated beauty school at 17 and went straight into a salon. She always knew she wanted to do something creative and didn’t want to work a standard 9-5 office job. Creative entrepreneurship at the time wasn’t really a thing, but this was a way for her to follow her creative passions. She fell in love with it and loved getting to chat with clients.
After many years, Jamie slowly transitioned out of working behind the chair at a salon and into education for other hair stylists. She works full time now helping other hair stylists grow their businesses and that is truly what lights her up. What she loved most about working with clients in the chair is the same thing that she now gets to do in a broader aspect.
When Jamie was early on in her career as a hairstylist, she had an educator come into the salon and teach a product knowledge class. Jamie asked a ton of questions and after the class and the educator asked her if she ever thought about going into education. He told her she would be a great educator. No one had ever told her that before.
That moment spurred her on to believe that she really could enter into the education world and be really good at it. She wasn’t sure what exactly this would look like for her. At the same time, Instagram was gaining traction and more and more people were able to make a name for themselves on the platform outside of the hair companies. She knew she didn’t want to work up a corporate ladder and wanted to be on her own. She began to post about education on Instagram, hired a business coach, and really established herself as an educator in the hair industry. At the time, no one was really teaching business education in the hair industry, it was only hair techniques that were being taught.
She created her online course and after having that for a couple of years and still working in the salon, it became too much. Jamie knew she had to make a change and her business coach encouraged her to get rid of her salon clients. Her salon business was really successful and she was making six figures doing that alone. It came down to the fact that Jamie felt called to help hair stylists grow their businesses and have a business and career they love. Working behind a chair wasn’t helping her achieve that. Jamie retired working as a hair stylist and went full time into education and it was the best decision she could have made.
Jamie does still teach hair techniques on her Youtube channel, but she is not having to do the day in and day out that took so much of her time. Instead of only spending time with her clients, Jamie is now able to impact hundreds of thousands of hair stylists, and those stylists can impact all of their client’s lives. It’s a ripple effect.
Jamie grew her Instagram following with time and experimenting. It takes experimenting with what works for you and your audience. There are tips and strategies, but it takes time. Jamie has been growing her following since 2014 and she has tested so many strategies through the process.
Jamie always tells people to niche down as far as you can. It was the best thing she did for her business. When Jamie started to create her course, which launched her educator business, she was teaching Instagram for hairstylists. It wasn’t for salon owners, or stylists who have done this for 50 years. It was for stylists who have only been in the industry for 2-5 years and were struggling to find new clientele. That is Jamie’s dream client.
Because Jamie niched down so far in the beginning, she is now able to expand it. Niche down and then you can expand from there. Over time Jamie became very clear on what her product delivered and was able to speak towards the benefits of that. Getting really clear on what exactly her course did helped her attract her ideal client.
We all so often feel on Instagram, or our website, or marketing emails that if we’ve said it once we don’t need to say it again. People started following Jamie and she realized they had no idea that she had freebies, a Youtube channel, and all the different things she offered. She had the idea to make a way where they could quickly and concisely consume who she was and what she did.
Jamie filmed a story for Instagram explaining who she was, what she did, who she helps, what she offers, and how she can serve people and saved it all as a highlight. At the very end, Jamie added a question box that asked her audience how they found out about her. After 24 hours, the question box isn’t live anymore, but Jamie has found that most people will DM her and let her know how they found her page. This gives her an opportunity to respond and connect with new followers and start a conversation. It allows her to create a natural conversation. This lets all of her new followers know exactly who she is and what she does.
So often people forget to think about the user experience on Instagram. Click over to your Instagram. What is the customer experience like? What does your bio say? If you were a new customer landing on your page, would you click the follow button? If your answer is no, then that is why you aren’t getting new followers. So often we don’t look at the client experience from start to finish. The customer experience from step one to clicking the follow button is huge and so many people don’t focus on it.
Share who you are, what you do, and how you serve people. This way people know immediately if you can serve them. Always have a call to action in your bio. If you are promoting a freebie put that link in there, or if you are promoting a product, but that in your bio.
Your bio needs to show exactly how you can serve and if you are the right person for someone to follow. If you aren’t the right person, then you don’t want them clicking the follow button because they are never going to engage with you. You want to make sure the right people are clicking the follow button and turn into clients.
If you are a local business, share your location. So many times people forget to put where they are located.
Finally, have your contact info. Make it easy for people to get ahold of you.
There is never a point where everything is perfectly balanced, it is constantly an ebb and flow. There will be seasons when you are hustling, and other seasons that are slower.
In hectic seasons, sometimes you need to step outside and take a 5 minute break. Try not to stress about every single day or week being balanced.
A huge part of balance is learning how to delegate things. Understand what you have the bandwidth to do.
Learning to say no as a business owner is so important. You are either growing your business or you’re growing someone else’s business. When you say yes to so many different things you are growing their business for them and you aren’t growing your business. This was a game changer for Jamie. Get clear on what will grow your business. When you burnout, you learn from it.
Getting really clear on what you want is the biggest lesson Jamie has learned. So often we make choices and decisions in our business based on what other people are doing and we don’t check in with ourselves. You constantly need to check in to figure out why you are doing something. Get really clear on what you want, what brings you joy, and what makes you happy and say screw it to everything else even if it is out of the norm. Get clear and realize it is a journey that has ups and downs.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
Whether you’re coming to an in-person workshop, joining our online course, or soaking up all the strategies via this blog or our podcast, we’re STOKED you’re here + can’t wait to see you out there kicking butt.
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