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The Best Investment Beauty Professionals Can Make
Posted on May 4, 2021
Sola Salon Studios
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“An investment in education gives the best returns” - Benjamin Franklin
As a beauty professional, ongoing education is not only an edge, it is essential to growing in your craft and career. Your clientele comes to you to shape their look - and that is a big responsibility! Therefore, it is absolutely critical to keep up with modern styles, techniques and technology to keep their looks up to date.
It is up to you to craft how your clients’ styles grow and evolve over the years. Every decade is defined by updated styles that create iconic looks and even style icons - all starting from a salon chair!
In the digital age, we have every resource at our fingertips to learn new skills and techniques virtually from the comfort of our own home or studio. It has never been easier to upgrade your toolkit as a beauty professional and learn from the best of the best.
The beauty industry and the Sola community offer exciting opportunities for ongoing education as both a beauty professional and small business owner. Whether you are seeking updated certifications, new skills, cutting-edge beauty tools, or business savvy classes, ongoing education is key to ensuring salon growth and prosperity.
Sola Educational Resources
At Sola, we are committed to offering access to ongoing education bespoke to Solapreneurs. You are in a unique position as both beauty professionals and salon owners, so we offer education that caters to a Sola Boss lifestyle.
Here are Sola’s educational resources to stay ahead of the curve in an ever-expanding beauty industry:
1. Sola Sessions Reconnected
The Sola Sessions are ongoing events that celebrate Sola beauty professionals through education, connection and inspiration. The Sola Sessions feature the industry’s top business, marketing, and artistic educators showing independent salon owners how to create the life of their dreams.
The Sessions are all about connection. After a 2020 hiatus, we are ready to reconnect with all of you!
For the first time ever, on Monday, May 17th, we are bringing the Sola Sessions to you for a live virtual event! Reconnect and learn with the most influential and cutting edge brands and experts in the industry like Britt Seva, Tim Storey, Sam Villa, Larisa Love, Daniel Mason-Jones, Michael Cole and so much more — all from the comfort of your own home.
Since this Sola Sessions is coming to you, you only have to worry about our super affordable event ticket price. No travel, no hotel, no problem!
For just $29, Sola professionals will receive 18+ hours of education from the industry’s top educators. All sections will be recorded and available to watch until the end of 2021, so you can revisit and rewatch to your heart's content. Grab your ticket to the Sola Sessions today!
2. Sola Pro
As a Sola professional, you have access to an entire library of educational tutorials, webinars and podcast episodes from the beauty industry’s leading experts.
Download the Sola Pro app, and go to the Education section. Click on “Videos” and “Tools & Resources” to find hundreds of educational videos. From trends and techniques to business and marketing, you can update your technique or learn how a Sola Boss files taxes.
Sola Pro also offers tons of exclusive Sola deals and all our latest blog posts so you never miss an opportunity to run your business like the pro you are. You can also find our content on Facebook Live, or YouTube Channel.
3. Sola Stories Podcast
The Sola Stories Podcast features stories, business expertise, marketing tips, and best practices to educate and inspire independent beauty professionals.
Tune into Sola Stories to hear from influential minds, from independent salon owners to industry thought leaders. The podcast features stories to inspire Solapreneurs to delve into your creative endeavors, chase your dreams, elevate your career and experience the freedom of salon ownership.
You can listen to the Sola Stories on:
4. Sola Blog
The Sola Blog features articles, videos, podcast episodes and more for marketing and business tips, Sola Spotlights, industry happenings, studio inspiration, and everything in between.
If you would like to read about particular topics, search through the blog category search tab at the top right corner in order to pick a category of inquiry. Lifestyle, inspiration, technology, community - we have content for everyone.
If reading is more your thing than video tutorials - we highly recommend spending some time on the Sola blog. If you’re more of a listener, we also turn all of our blog posts into audio blogs so you can even listen to the Sola blog while you drive to the salon or clean in between clients.
Beauty Industry Educational Resources
1. Ongoing Education / New Certifications
As a beauty professional, your continued education is invaluable and what better investment to make at this juncture in your career than in yourself!
When you decide to invest in your education, look out for experts and industry leaders that you admire to train and certify with. Constant improvement to your skillset and craft will build you a creative and fulfilling career in the beauty industry.
Your clients will love to hear about your ongoing education, so display new certifications on social media posts, framed in your salon, or in your email blasts. Let them know that they are in good hands with a professional who is ahead of the curve for new techniques, technologies and styles. In learning new techniques, you might even have the opportunity to offer additional services to new and returning clients, building your business further.
2. Clubhouse
Clubhouse is an invite-only, audio-based social media platform that has taken 2021 by storm. Clubhouse features discussion rooms with podcast-style moderators, where users can listen to live streaming audio and even join in the conversation “on stage” with the push of a button (and the go-ahead from the room’s moderator).
We love Clubhouse for the vast array of beauty professionals who are already making waves on the platform. Industry leaders have flocked to Clubhouse to share skills, expertise and perspective on a platform in a raw and authentic format.
Sola has opened up our very own Club on Clubhouse for beauty professionals and independent salon owners to connect. We will feature education and inspiration from industry leaders, educators and Solapreneurs. If you’re already on Clubhouse, click here on your mobile device or search “Sola Salon Studios'' under the Clubs search bar in your Clubhouse app.
If you are waiting for a reason to activate your Clubhouse link from a friend - consider this your sign! Otherwise, ask your friends and Sola peers if they have an invitation link from Clubhouse in order to receive a link to sign up for the platform. See you on stage!
3. TikTok
Ok, we know this one sounds a little bit cheesy, but have you searched hair tutorials or nail techniques on TikTok? This platform has become the world’s go-to platform for video tutorials and educational content.
With more than 2.6 billion Tik Tok users, there is no shortage of tutorial videos for any taste or interest. Beauty industry experts and thought-leaders have begun to enter the TikTok space as well, making for high-quality content that is current, stylish and engaging.
Short attention span? One-minute video limits make TikTok an awesome option for entertaining yet informative demonstrations. Unlike drawn-out 30-minute-long YouTube tutorials, TikTok has a limit of one minute for any video. Content producers on the platform utilize jump cuts and quick transitions to shorten the information to fit into the time parameters. This makes for a unique opportunity to view a process in less than a minute, while still visualizing the overall process.
We love indulging in TikTok tutorials of all kinds, from DIY videos to life hacks to financial tricks of the trade. Search for beauty professionals, brands or industry experts to find videos that will inspire your creativity and craft. Search “#solasalons” or “#solasalonstudios” to find videos and accounts from your Sola peers, from salon makeovers to beauty techniques.
Do you have tricks of the trade that you would like to share? TikTok is an excellent platform for crafting videos that demonstrate total transformation. We recommend making videos that feature before and after shots of your work, tips and techniques in your field, and videos that feature your wisdom as a beauty professional. Share your knowledge on a platform that makes it so easy to do! Use some hashtags and tag #solasalons, and you may just have a following in no time.
Pay it Forward… Educate Others
As you continually upgrade your skills, tools and resources for building the career and business of your dreams, you may reach a point where you would like to pass your knowledge to others - peers and clients alike. That is great! We recommend creating content - educational blogs and videos, how-to tutorials, advice for styling, tips and tricks, techniques and inspiration - anything that feels right for what you would like to share.
We recommend these channels for pushing your content out into the world for the first time:
- Having your story told on the Sola Stories Podcast or other podcast outlets. If you have a story you’d like to share, send us a DM on Instagram to let us know!
- Creating a TikTok, YouTube or Facebook/Instagram channel with tutorial videos
- Creating your own blog and posting to social media
- Send email newsletters to clients and followers with educational content
Set Educational Goals… and Reach Them!
We recommend setting annual goals for your education to stay on track with your evolution as an artist, beauty professional and salon owner. We recommend choosing 1-3 major educational goals to tackle per year.
Here are some ideas for educational goals that can supercharge your craft and your business over time:
- Attend the Sola Sessions Reconnected
- Every other year, earn one new certification
- Listen to the Sola Stories Podcast on your way to work
- Publish 1 video, blog, or educational social media post per month
- Learn one new beauty technique every quarter
- Adopt one new technological upgrade to your salon per year
- Hone one new business skill (ie. accounting, investing, financing, taxes, marketing, social media, retailing) per quarter
Create your own educational goals and write them down. It is never too late and you are never too old to uplevel your craft and business savvy!
Sola is committed to supporting your ongoing education and keeping our community at the cutting edge of exciting developments in the beauty industry. Do you have any educational gaps that you would like for Sola to address? Do you have any educational content that you would like to see? Send us a DM on Instagram to let us know!
The surest investment you will ever make is to invest in your own education. Take advantage of these educational opportunities for a surefire return on investment.
