The Community Spotlight series showcases innovative GlossGenius Educators and Ambassadors who go above and beyond, not only to educate their community but to inspire them, to dare them to dream big, and to empower them with the tools to succeed in managing and growing their business.

Kelsey is the owner of The Sydney Co. Salon and co-owner of The Sydney Collection boutique. She has a passion for beauty and loves to make women feel their best. In her 10 years as a cosmetologist, she has set and accomplished many goals like becoming a Sunlights Artisan Educator, traveling nationally to teach other stylists special techniques, and remaining an active member of the GlossGenius community as an Educator since the very beginning. You can follow Kelsey at @kelseymorris18.

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Dani Berkowitz  

Hi Kelsey, thank you so much for agreeing to sit down with me and tell me your success story. I feel like I'm in the presence of royalty, because you are not only an OG GlossGenius user, but also one of the pillars in our community having been an Educator, as well as just a dedicated and loyal community member.

Kelsey Morris  

Aww, thank you so much. It's really kind of you to say, really, I'm like, aww.

Dani Berkowitz  

Well, I love that we're sitting down today to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is resilience. So let's start in the beginning, I want to go back to the early days. Tell me who Kelsey Morris was before she became a beauty professional and hair artist.

Kelsey Morris  

Oh, gosh, I was just literally, as you were starting to say that, like, thinking back like 'Man, that feels like a really long time ago, I'm getting really old.' So you know, it's so interesting because my story begins actually, probably when I was around 12 years old. My mom came home and I had all my friends lined up in the kitchen, and I was cutting their hair. And, you know, I was determined I was going to give them layers and I did, actually – I actually didn't even get any angry phone calls.

But my mom's like 'You can't do this, you can't cut people's hair in our kitchen.' I'm like 'Why, I love it!' So you know, it's funny, because it's kind of always been a thing. I think it's in me. And actually one of my earliest memories is of when I was five years old, my mom was pregnant with twins, and to keep me busy, we used to play hair salon. And so she would lay in her bed because she was on bed rest and she'd be like 'Okay, I'm going to the prom,' and I would style her hair for the prom, or she'd say 'I'm going out to the mall,' and I'd style her for the mall. So I think it's all kind of been in my blood for the longest time.

But I'm a very book smart person, I actually got really good grades in school, and so, you know, I was honors through high school. And I told my parents I wanted to do hair, and they're like 'Yeah, but...' like most parents – this career can be hard. It can be hard on the body, it can be hard on the mind, you have to be resilient. So they're like 'Well, what about a college education? If you still want to do hair then do it after.' So I graduated from Ohio State. I have a criminology degree. I thought for a little bit that I wanted to go into the FBI and be like a forensic analyst or something like that. But in my senior year of college, I got pregnant with my son. Very surprised, it was a big deal. And I thought, okay, I'm not really sure the FBI is a really good place for this baby.

So you know, I always knew I wanted to go to hair school. So I graduated, had my son, and then I went to hair school just a few months later – and worked two jobs to put myself through hair school, so that I could support my son and still support my dream. And you know, the rest has just been history. I mean, as soon as I was able to get on my feet, I built a clientele pretty fast and went solo probably six months into my hair career. That's a little bit of what I did before being a hairstylist, but I think it's always kind of been, like I said, a part of me, it's always been something I wanted to do. And I still love every day of it.

Dani Berkowitz  

So you became a mother. And I'm sure that that put your personal goals on pause – not stopped and not abandoned, but on pause. What challenges did you face when getting your business rolling as a mother?

Kelsey Morris  

You know, sometimes it makes me emotional to think about it because – I think there's so many people who've been put in this position where you're not expecting – I was not expecting to have a child. And you have all these plans and all these life goals and the way that you think it's going to work out.

And I sometimes have a little bit of mom guilt because I think for the first year and a half, maybe two years of my son's life, I was working so much just to take care of him that I had limited time with him. And I just knew I was just trying to survive at that moment. But I also was able to have the foresight to know that pushing myself at that time was going to set him up and myself up for the future.

So I was like 'Okay, I'm going to push as hard as I can right now, and so that way, we're going to be okay in the long run.' So I started out at Ulta because I knew that when you're coming out of hair school, you don't have a client base. And I thought it was important to – this sounds terrible, but it's true and everyone in the hair industry knows – make mistakes under somebody else's name.

So Ulta is a corporation, they were going to educate me, they're going to feed me their product line, and I was going to have their backing when things went wrong and someone to help fix them. And then I learned pretty fast, I've always been a very eager person to learn.

I was able to learn and build and take my knowledge and move out to a booth rental situation, which then became – you know, it sounds crazy to people like 'Oh, that sounds like really difficult' – well, it actually was a little bit easier for me, because then I could juggle my schedule better. So I would be like 'Okay, my son can go to daycare two days a week, I will just cram a million clients in those days,' and then I had the other days off with him, and that's kind of how I started the balance.

Dani Berkowitz  

When the pandemic hit, you were at the height of your career. Can you illustrate what that looked like for us?

Kelsey Morris  

Oh, absolutely. It's kind of hard to explain – it all happened pretty fast for me. You know, I had my daughter in 2014. We had just moved back to Columbus, Ohio. And I went solo and then I ended up at Sola. At Sola, I became one of the faces of Sola in 2019, which is a huge honor because they choose 10 people from I think now it's like 16,000 stylists across the U.S. And then we get to represent Sola for the year, and I was able to travel nationally with them and speak on Sola's behalf. And I would get to go to conferences and talk to other stylists, and really my passion is educating people and talking to people – I was able to tell them how I got where I was, and just like mentor other up-and-coming stylists. So that really kind of put me on the map.

And then shortly after, I became a Sunlights Balayage Educator, and if anybody knows me, they know that Candy Shaw, who is the owner and founder of Sunlights Balayage has always been my long term... like, she's like my idol. She's just that person that you see, and you're just like [heavenly sound]. Like I just, I love her, and she chose me to be on her education team. So I got to go down to Atlanta and train with her for like four days personally and then she kind of became my mentor. And so you know, those two things, like I said, those kind of started to put me on the map. So as I was doing all the stuff for Sola, I was educating for Sunlights, I was getting lots of features in magazines, and shown on Modern Salon and American Salon and doing lots of Instagram stuff. And I started to notice my dream clientele was coming around, so I kind of had started to shift into more things that I was really enjoying doing.

Around that time I decided, well, I'm going to open up a salon of my own. I branched out, I bought an 1860s building, we renovated it completely, opened a six-chair salon and a clothing boutique attached to it. So I have two businesses in one hub. And so that was great. You know, we were recognized in this little tight loop. As you know, I'm from Columbus, Ohio, and my salon's in Delaware, Ohio. And I was being recognized all over Columbus for doing that. And then two days later, the pandemic shut us down. So I was like 'Yes!' and I was just so excited and I was like just propelling. And then all of a sudden it was like 'Umm, just kidding,' and then I sat home for three months.

Dani Berkowitz  

With two kids?!

Kelsey Morris  

With two kids!

Dani Berkowitz  

With two businesses?!

Kelsey Morris  

Yes! Two kids, two businesses that are now failing – and then no income, because if you don't work you don't get any money, and we weren't allowed to have unemployment at that point. And I mean, I am a worker, I love to stay busy, so probably one of the hardest times of my life was just sitting here like 'Now what?' And so yeah, it was definitely a big shift in my life and it took me a minute and it's still kind of taking me some time to regain the momentum.

Dani Berkowitz  

What are the three most important things you would recommend to anyone creating their own beauty business? Maybe you're a mom, maybe you're not.

Kelsey Morris  

You know, that's a hard question. That's a hard thing because you could go many ways with this but I think to be to be honest, the three most important things to look at before starting your business are: number one, I always tell people to kind of look at their week and run a report knowing exactly how much you made – the delta. So not just what your sales were but include the cost of product, include the cost of retail, and then take your sales.

You want to set a goal – you need to know how much you can live off of and how much you can afford to pay rent. And then you also have to factor in that you are probably going to lose some clients, so you know, if you're going solo and you're going to be starting your own business, you have got to factor that in. So I would say factor in at least 30% for that. Once you hit that goal, then you probably know you're okay to start this.

The other thing is, I am not a numbers person. I am not a details person. I am an artist. So I think this was really hard for me, was being able to organize all of my things and put it all together and try to be methodical about that but not overthink it. It's more like develop a plan, write it all down, get your accountant in place, get your booking software, your clients, your retail, all that, get it in place and put it all somewhere, put it all down so at least you have a general idea.

And then like, honestly, my third biggest tip – everybody thinks I'm crazy whenever I say this, but I mean – just do it before you're ready. Do it before you're ready. Because if you wait... I am the type of person, I commit to something and then I figure out how I'm going to make it happen. Because the commitment forces me to propel myself into that. And so if you wait until you're ready, that's never going to happen because you're never going to feel 100% ready. I have never felt 100% ready for anything that's happened in my life. I just force myself to be ready when the time comes.

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Dani Berkowitz  

It's funny that you're saying this, because I imagine that's how you felt when you found out you were pregnant. You were like 'Okay, I guess this commitment's made for me. Now, how do I work backwards?'

Kelsey Morris  

Right, exactly. Literally, exactly.

Dani Berkowitz  

So for our audience at home who may not be able to see or tell, you are actually pregnant right now.

Kelsey Morris  

Yes, I am. I am 32 weeks pregnant with our third child. So I've got a bump under here – you know, it's like business on top, and then like bump, and then party.

Dani Berkowitz  

How did that news feel to you?

Kelsey Morris  

So this is really a fun story for me, because you know, this is our only planned child. And what's interesting about said child is that the pandemic happened and I was at the height of my career. And I was just like going 100 miles an hour. I honestly think had it not happened, I wouldn't have slowed down enough to say 'Hey, what about that baby we've always talked about?' because the timing never felt right. Because I felt like 'Well, if I'm going to be traveling every weekend, if I'm going to be doing this, how am I going to have time for this?'

And it forced me to slow down enough and to really dig deep and know like, okay, I've been wanting this baby for so long, at the time it's never felt like it's been appropriate. But like 'Hey, why not now?' So I know it sounds crazy, people probably think it's so weird but I'm like 'Yeah, no, this is planned.' And I have a 12-year old, a seven-year old, and then a newborn. And I'm 35 and pregnant, which is, you know, geriatric, these days. So people are like 'Oh my gosh, was it a surprise?' I'm like 'No, actually, it was like the only one that wasn't a surprise.' So, it's funny.

Dani Berkowitz  

I love it. And when it comes to software, what should a beauty professional look for in terms of standing out and setting you apart from the rest, and how did GlossGenius help you with that?

Kelsey Morris  

Yeah, I think that's a really important question because – especially in today's day and age – software is becoming such an important part of our livelihood. And honestly, I hate to say it but it can kind of like really set you apart, make or break you. So I think one of the most important things that I was looking for when I first was looking in the software scene was I knew I needed something that was really intuitive. Something that was going to actually showcase my brand more than just, you know, get online, book your appointment, and then come in and see me.

I wanted to be able to have this beautiful custom website and that's one thing that GlossGenius had that originally drew me to that, was I could customize my website. It was beautiful. There's my brand. It wasn't – I love to use the word clunky – because some of the other sites that I had tried were just very clunky, they were just like, nothing stylish about it. It just was like you're going through the motions and honestly weren't very user-friendly.

So obviously some of the most important things, you want it to be user-friendly – not only for you, but for your customers. Ease of use for your customers. I don't know how many times I've been like trying to get on to book something and I'm like 'Nope, too hard, done, discouraged, I don't want to do it, move on.' So if your client goes on and they're having a hard time booking, well, that ain't going to work.

I love that GlossGenius was so user-friendly, and all my clients kept being like 'Oh my gosh, this is so easy. Yes, it's great.' And the other thing that's so awesome is that they didn't have to remember a username or password – it literally recognizes them by their email and their phone number and their name. So I think that's great, too, because again, I don't know how many times it's like two in the morning, you want to make your hair appointment and it's like enter in your username and password, and you're like 'Oh my gosh' and so you try like four of them, and then it locks you out, and then you just give up, you're just done. So I love this, it makes it so easy for them to just go on and book their appointments.

I also think it's important when you're looking for software to find something that is able to help you run your business and give you back your time, so that's a big thing. I actually still encounter stylists who use pen and paper. And actually one girl, you know, just started working at my salon. And I told her 'Just try GlossGenius, just try it for 30 days. If you hate it, I'll understand.' And she was like 'Well I'm still gonna keep my pen and paper.' I'm like, 'Umm-hmm, yeah, you are.' And 30 days, and she's never looked back – she was like, 'The best thing I've ever done is put it all online.'

And here's why: Because you don't recognize how much time you're putting into going back and forth with your client for an appointment, you're missing text messages, you're missing phone calls, they're bothering you during your personal hours, but you feel like you have to get back to them. And then you have to have your book with you everywhere, so if you're out at the grocery store and someone texts you, well, you can't text them back right then because you don't have your stuff with you. You have to go home and get it, and by then you've already forgotten to text them back, so there's a missed appointment, forget it.

So I think the ease of use and the giving you back your time, in that sense... but not only that, we also send out confirmations and reminders. So you're really letting them know 'Hey, Susie, you have an appointment!' and so there's really little excuse for no-shows, there's hardly ever last-minute cancellations because they know in advance, which gives you, again, your time to save by sending them a message and then also save your time when you don't have no-shows and you can fill that spot with clients. So I think that those are really important for me, and when it came to software, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Dani Berkowitz  

What was your GG story from the beginning?

Kelsey Morris  

Okay, so my GG story is really... it's one of my favorite stories to tell, because it's honestly just like I think the way things happen for me in life, sometimes. I was working at a different salon suite and I moved over to a Sola salon, and the other salon suite had this really intuitive, awesome software. And when I was leaving there, I was like 'Oh gosh, now what am I going to do?' I couldn't really find anything else and I had tried several other softwares and just didn't love them. They were not what I was used to, didn't love it.

And my franchisee came up to me and said 'Hey, we're going to be launching this new thing. It's called GlossGenius. It's not out yet. But when it does come out, I'll let you know.' And me being the type of person – I do not like to wait around – so immediately that night, I got on the app store and I just looked up GlossGenius just to see what it was then and it was there.

So I downloaded it and I just started entering my client information. And this is at like nine or 10 at night, and then I get a text message from someone on the customer care team and they're like 'Hi, Kelsey, we saw you signed up for GG. How's it going?' And I was like 'Wow, this is great customer service.' Like I was loving it, you know? I was like 'This is great.' They're like 'Well, just so you know, we're not officially launched yet, you actually are like one of the first people to ever download it.' And it was funny because I just jumped ahead of everybody. I mean, I was really anxious to use it, but I loved it.

And then shortly after then, all the hype was built and they were pushing it out to everybody. But honestly, we went back and forth a lot, they got to ask me a lot of questions in the beginning like 'Well, how do you find this? And what do you think about this feature? And what are the other features that you like?' But right out the gate I knew that this was so advanced, I mean, this was better than what I had been using before and anything else that was on the market – and this was a baby company.

So I knew I was set with GG and I was going to stick with them forever. And then of course, becoming part of the GG team has been also life-changing because being one of the people who's been with them from the beginning, and being able to also give them a stylist perspective, it's been really cool. Because you know, stylists are a totally different breed. You know, we're just... the way we work is totally different. So I can kind of offer a little bit of a different perspective, I think, than just the engineering portion of it or the behind-the-scenes portion of it. So it's been really cool.

Dani Berkowitz  

As the first Educator at GlossGenius, tell me about your experience with community and how you've built not only your network professionally, but personally found others who are like-minded and people who you want to build relationships with.

Kelsey Morris  

Interestingly enough, a big shift in my career was the moment that I jumped on with the GlossGenius Educator team. And I kind of look at that and I see that as my first real opportunity to make an impact with my community. I knew I've always loved to teach and I always love to mentor, and I think that that was the first time that I was given an opportunity to do so.

So I think, honestly, it's just been wild like the progress of it and that's so important to me is touching the lives of other people in whatever way I possibly can. Being an educator has really become more than just a software to me. It became, like you said, an entire community because it's a relationship, it's a vibe, it's all these people coming together to really uplift each other.

In our GlossGenius Educator program, we also have a group of like-minded individuals, and we share group discussions all the time. And we're always pushing each other, we're always helping each other, and you always have someone you can reach out to. So I think that just that little extra bit of support, too, has been really awesome. I think it's really important in your career – whether it's educating or doing whatever – to find a group of like-minded individuals to really help you stay focused in your career, but also have someone to bounce ideas with, and to really just have your back, I guess.

Dani Berkowitz  

How has GlossGenius helped you improve the results of your business?

Kelsey Morris  

GlossGenius has definitely helped me manage my business in so many different ways. I think, you know, first I talked about the whole time piece, obviously balancing a lot of things. I want to make sure that, when I am home with my family, I have as much time with my family as possible and I don't want to have to be going back and forth with clients. So I push most people to my booking website, and then my automated text reminders really help them.

But also really just keeping your business in one place, it's really beneficial. For example, I have a client that came in yesterday, and her name is Susie, and I'm able to leave all of her notes in her profile, I know exactly what I charged her because we also have checkout software, so I can see exactly what I charged her for every process.

And then, knowing I'm going on maternity leave here in the next six-to-eight weeks, my peers who are going to be taking over can also go right back into my account, look at her profile, and they can see what my notes were for each session, they can know exactly what I charged her, they have her contact information and everything in there. So this is an interesting time because it's my first time that I'm on maternity leave that I'm like 'Oh, well, this is like, I'm gonna pass it off to my peers, and I have no problem,' right?

They've got all the information they need, it's going to be so easy, it's going to be great. And also, from another standpoint, you know, reports and analytics I think are a really important thing. And like I mentioned earlier, I don't love numbers, looking at numbers really stresses me out. So having all of that in one place and really just knowing where my business stands from a numbers perspective is very important, and has really propelled me and helped me know how to set goals and how to achieve those goals. So I think that's been really beneficial as well.

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Dani Berkowitz  

This goes with what you were mentioning earlier – and this is what I meant by resilience – a lot of people can say 'Don't give up,' but it's really about, don't give up and make a plan. And you have exhibited the ability to take it and run with it over and over and over again. I can only imagine how that has affected you but I also think you've cracked the code on: It's not about choosing between being a mom and a successful business owner. It's about figuring out a way to make both happen.

Kelsey Morris  

I think as women, I think it's really important to know that we don't have to choose between being a successful business owner and being a mom, and that it's not really about making a choice anymore. It's about figuring out how to make it happen. So often I think a lot of topics of conversation are like 'You're a mom, you're a business owner, like how do you do it all?'

There's been a little bit of a shift I think in recent years where it's like well 'What do you mean how do I do it all? Of course I do it all!' That's because that's the choice that I made. That's what I wanted to do. And I don't think I'm any more relevant or any more special than a mother who chooses to stay home or a woman who's in a business career who doesn't have children. It's just a personal choice that I make for myself and I think – like you said and I love that you said – that I cracked the code on maintaining resiliency, because that is really important to me.

You know, I think that it's a mindset. I'm a really big believer in the fact that our mind is so powerful and if you allow yourself to be defeated because things keep happening, it's piling, like, that is a choice. And you have got to make the choice every single day to work through these things that are happening and try to find – you know it sounds cheesy – but try to find the silver lining in it and run with it. And honestly, if there's one secret to my success, that's it.

Dani Berkowitz 

If you could give a TED Talk, what would the topic be?

Kelsey Morris  

I honestly think it would be teaching people how to have a better mindset. I think that sounds a little cheesy, but honestly, I think the power of the mind is really important. And as we talked about earlier with resiliency and juggling motherhood and the many careers and the businesses and the things and the letdowns and the perks and all the stuff – I would just love to have an impact on people's mental ability and their stamina.

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Honestly, I think that's really one of the most important things because you can be given, you know, handed the keys to success, and if one thing happens to you and it levels you out, and you can't figure out how to rally from that, well, then it was all a waste. So, I don't know, I think that that's probably what I would like to talk to people about, I guess.

Dani Berkowitz  

I can totally see you doing that one day. I have the vision in my head – by the way, all three kids are on stage with you.