After a few solid weeks of juggling it’s here, our website. Running a small business is no easy feat, especially when it calls for constant change and evolution. Keep up with modern trends, staying on top of new techniques, and above all, moving with the times in a digital age.
So where did I start? After many hair pulling moments, my own not the guests, I decided to start in a place that’s so comfortably ingrained in me, my second love. Photography.
About 17 years ago, ekk, i set up my very own black and white darkroom. I would spend hours in there like a little mushroom, practicing “my Art form”. Each shot I took and developed was so precious, as working with film and paper taught me to take my time framing an image. An experience I am now eternally grateful for, as photography is such a big part of our industry. So I crawled along the salon floor in search of the perfect angle, repurposed trolleys as moving tripods and took way too many pictures of our plants.
After this came the unfinished Graphic Design degree, hours of moving small lines around a blank square, in aid of teaching me about negative space, balance, harmony. I take back everything that 19 year old me said about the square assignment. It had nothing on the wonderful game of Tetris that is, reassembling your entire complete website so it’s mobile compatible.
After initial design I was left with, the words. Easier said than done when you’re a dyslexic hairdresser. Thankfully I was able to tap into another partially complete study, Screenwriting. Learning to write scripts helped me to condense my naturally wordy approach to life. My passion for hairdressing helped me speak from the heart, and the feedback from our ever supportive guests helped me write not just what I wanted to say, but what they wanted to hear.
Taking on the task of creating Afreya’s website, while running a full column of guests and managing a team was initially a crazy and downright ambitious idea. But that’s what you have to be when you’re running your own business, a little bit crazy and ambitious.
What I learned is to not take previous skills and experiences for granted. You can draw on everything to make it work. While my main goal was looking to the future, staying modern and up to date, I found myself revisiting the past.
This experience then became a beautiful metaphor for Afreya and our industry. Moving ahead is always easier when you have a strong foundation to build upon, when you don’t discard the old completely for the new, you build on it.
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