How I Started (And Market) My Lash Extension Business

We spoke to Jenna, a lash extension specialist who has been in the industry for 10 years after previously working in an office job, to find out more about how she built up a successful lash business from scratch. Jenna has her own salon and does around 30-40 sets of lashes a week after cutting down to get her work life balance back.

Here is her story...

I trained in lashes 2007 whilst working full time in an office job with a plan to do lashes part time to build up my client base. At the beginning to promote my work I set up a website and had flyers printed which I delivered in the local area in my spare time. Now obviously, I’d used social media too but this wasn’t really an option 10 years ago!

I have to admit that with a full time job and part time lashes I found it quite hard to focus on building up a client base – I felt tired all the time and my day job limited my availability for clients. I enjoyed lashing so I decided to just go for it and make it work. It was scary handing my notice in but I made the decision to move back home and rented out my house to minimise my outgoings. Obviously I’m not recommending that you do this, this is just how I did it and looking back I feel like I was crazy!

I started renting some salon space and luckily worked with a really good salon manager who actively helped to promote my services and gave me the first month rent free. I carried on flyers and promoting as now this was my only way of bringing in an income. Things started to take off and I was really busy but with hindsight I could have done more promotion to clients that came into the salon for other things, I was just a bit shy. Later on I used to do the girls in the salon’s lashes so that they could promote my work to their clients and as lashes became more popular I found it really helpful – I used to actually offer some of the hairdressers in a salon incentives for getting me lash bookings.

Without sounding too stuck up, the best thing I did in this time was honing my skills and ensuring that my work was high quality. I used the best lash extension tools and products that I could find but I also actually reduced my prices as I was able to do a full set much more quickly. Although my prices went down, I did more sets in a day as I got quicker so actually earned more. The lower price also brought more clients through the door too which was great news. I also built up a referral scheme during this time to build up even more regular clients.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was trying to do too much at certain points. I was really keen and trained in various different things but never actually had the time to practice and get to a point where I could offer them as treatments. I’m now in a position where I have my own salon and rent out space to other professionals so I let them do what they’re good at and continue with what I’m good at…lashes!