ep. 006 • 5 Game-Changing Apps for Your Henna Business

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Chelsea Stevenson: Welcome to the Hennapreneur podcast. The exclusive podcast of its kind, dedicated to giving you an honest look at the reality of making a living as a henna professional. I'm your host, Chelsea Stevenson, professional henna artist and business strategist. I teach budding henna artists and seasoned henna pros alike how to build vibrant, profitable businesses doing what they love. I went from being the girl who could barely piece together a fluid design to being owner of the most celebrated henna boutique in my city. And with years of experience growing my own business and helping others to do the same, I'm here to spill all the tea on what it takes to be a bonafide Hennapreneur. Our show starts in just under 60 seconds, but first, here's a quick shout out to my sponsors.

This episode is sponsored by the Hennapreneur eMagazine! Whether you're just getting started, you're ready to go pro, you've got a solid business, or you're ready to scale, Hennapreneur has a free downloadable e-magazine that’s ready just for you with insights on how you can better build your business in that phase of the game. Each volume features articles specifically for that particular part of the henna journey. So head on over to hennapreneur.com and download your free copy today!

All right, let's get to the show! Hey, hey hennapreneurs! So at the time of recording this episode, it is chilly, chilly, chilly. I don't know about you and where you are in the world, but here in Baltimore, October is coming on strong. And so I am here bundled up with my cardigan. Yes, shout out cardigan season and um, you know what, I'm just making it do. We're making it do what it do. You know, but I've got to tell you, I really, I love the crisp weather. Super looking forward to visiting the pumpkin patch with my family and the apple orchard this weekend. But I gotta tell you, I could totally go for just a couple more degrees on the thermostat. Oh goodness! So, I want to talk to you guys today about, um, you know, I'm just sharing a little, a little inside stuff. Give you guys a little inside scoop to my own business because I get this question a lot and that is, "Chelsea, I see that you're moving around and you're doing so many different things and I'd love to know what your favorite tools are or my favorite resources, um, for managing a business on the go." And so I thought, you know, "Why not, why not?"

Now, if you didn't know already on the blog, some, ooh, months back, I shared a blog post about some of my favorite apps for running a henna business, but I figured that was a great time to give you guys a little bit more, um, insight in details to the apps that I use almost on a daily basis, honestly, um, to help keep my business moving forward and moving smoothly. Um, you know, and while I'm doing all of the things, if you don't know if you're new to me, I am the owner of Cardamom and Clove Henna, based in Baltimore, Maryland. I am a full time henna artist. I own a henna boutique. Um, and I've been doing henna since 2011, so I've been in the game for quite a while and I'll tell you during all of that time I've done all the things myself. And so I've learned really, really quickly how to be efficient and how to really, you know, just leverage my time and leverage my skills, um, in ways that kept my business moving forward so that I could continue to make full time income and continue to do the things that I love. Like the pumpkin patch this weekend.

So, today I'm sharing with you five of my favorite apps that I use to keep my henna business relevant and moving forward and just, you know, doing the things. So number one, a booking system, listen, I don't know about you, but one of the things that I really, really dislike is getting like text messages or DMs or phone calls, ugh, from people who would like to book services. And it's not because I don't want to serve them. I really, really do. I love my job and I love my clients, but the onboarding of new clients, it can be so, so draining and the back and forth, and the asking questions, and all of that.

Um, I homeschool during the day. And so it's, it's a challenge for me sometimes. You know, when I, when I get, um, you know, asked, asked, you know, well, what about this time and what about this day and all of this, you know, back and forth. And so I found it incredibly helpful to have an online booking system that works well for me. So I use Acuity. Um, and Acuity has an amazing, amazing mobile app where you can manage all of the backend of the booking process. You can create your services, you can update, you know, your prices. You can, um, change things if your clients need, you know, need things to be rescheduled or need to cancel or need, whatever. You can book things right there. They can book things online on their own. You can manage your coupon codes if you're giving discounts or if you're, you know, running a special promotion for your, for your favorite clients or things like this. I have to tell you, the Acuity system is phenomenal.

Now I'll tell you, I, in the past, have used a bunch of different booking systems and I'm happy, you know, if you guys would like to hear my comparison of the booking systems, let me know. I will totally do an episode for you just about that. But I'll tell you, um, over the past nine months or so, I'd say I switched over to Acuity, begrudgingly, I'll tell you. And I wasn't 100% sure that I was going to love it. But I have to say I am totally, totally a fan girl now. And so I use Acuity, um, to schedule all of my clients for private appointments at the henna boutique. Um, prior to opening the boutique, I also used, um, Acuity to manage multiple locations when I was working as a mobile artist. And I mention that specifically because I know how hard it is to find booking software that supports multiple locations.

Listen, this is a real thing. This is a real challenge for us, and I have to tell you that, honestly, is why I didn't want to use Acuity in the past. It was because I wasn't sure that it was going to have all the functionality that I needed and I'd already found a different booking system that also supported multiple locations and so I was really reluctant to switch. But since making the switch I absolutely love it, and um, so I have to tell you, if you are looking for an app that's going to help you manage your clients, um, just manage your calendar, all those things. Acuity is it, it does connect to your Google calendar or to your iPhone calendar or whatever calendar you're using, right? Which is beautiful. So I can make changes like in my family we have 6 million things going on every day. So we share a family calendar and I love that I can go in and make updates, you know, to the homeschool calendar or my husband can go in and update about something that's going on with the kids and it automatically will adjust my availability for clients to book as well. Um, it just makes it super, super simple. Also, you can set up different appointment types if you wanted to. For example, um, offer a specific service type only on one day of the week or only during a certain type of, like during a certain period of hours, something like this. Acuity has that functionality.

I just, I have to tell you, I, I mean it when I say I did not want to switch over. Once I switched over, totally loved it. Totally will never leave by the way, because I love you guys. I have a link for you. You can get your first three months of Acuity free. Now listen, this is for Hennapreneurs only. Okay? That's how you guys know that I come through. I love Acuity so much. I've got it set up for you. If not one month, y'all, not one month, three months. If you'd like to try Acuity for three months, I'll put the link in the show notes for you. There's no coupon code needed. Just click the link and it will give you the first three months on the platform totally, totally free. 'Cause your girls got you!

Number two, Canva. Listen, I don't know about you, but I'm no graphic designer, right? And more than that I definitely don't, I don't have the time, the skills, the know-how, to develop all of the things from scratch, all the time. But I will say this, any time I need to create something unique for social media, any time I need to create something for one of my programs, any time that I want to update my, you know, my audience about festivals that I'm going to be at or different events that I'm going to be at. Any time I'm building out brand collateral, like banners for my booth or signage for um, events or my business card, any of that. I turn to Canva. I love Canva.

So if you're not familiar with Canva, it's actually, it's a web based application. You can use it on your laptop as well, but they have an app. It's really convenient. Now I will say, I will say the app does not provide all of the functionality that the website does, right? But I feel like that's a given. I feel like that's most things, right? But if you're looking for something that you can use to create like infographics, let's say for example you want to create some new Instagram story slides and um, you just don't know how, right? You would pop over to Canva and there you can create things using templates. They have their own templates you're we- you can use and you can customize them. You can, you know, save your brand colors so that all of the things that you produce are really nice and well put together. Um, and then if you wanted to create something from scratch, you could totally do that as well. Canva automatically has all of the different dimensions that you would need everything from, again, Instastories to, you know, Instagram posts. If you wanted to just send something out to your clients, you know, via email, all of those things. Canva has just a ton of functionality. Everything from like 6 million fonts, everything from like 6 million fonts, to you know, to graphics that, um, that you can use if you want to just like add on graphic elements to your pictures and such to make them a little bit more visually interesting. I love Canva because you can create things on the fly.

So let's say, for example, you get a phone call from someone or you get an email, an inquiry from someone saying, "Hey, listen, um, I wanna purchase a gift certificate. Do you do that?" And you know that you don't have a gift certificate, you can answer confidently, "Uh, yes, I do offer a gift certificates," and next thing you know, you go onto Canva, create your template for your gift certificate, sell them the gift certificate and send that thing their way.

Listen, it is super, super simple and it's, it's a great resource. Honestly, if you are wanting to just create more brand consistency, I hear this a lot from my students. Like, "Okay, so I know that I want to build a brand and I want my, you know, I want my Instagram feed to be more cohesive," or "I want all my marketing materials to be more cohesive," Well, Canva is a great place for you to be able to create all of those things and for them also to all come out looking consistent and all come out looking very clean and professional. All you have to do is make sure that you're using the same brand colors, the same fonts, and so forth. And then you can build out your content in a way that's really easy and you can do it on the go. You can do it from your phone. So, I use Canva literally every day. There's not a day that I don't touch Canva. So I, you know, that's definitely one that I wanted to be sure to share with you.

Number three is the VSCO app. VSCO. Now if you are anything like me, you love a really nice, clean, curated photo. Yeah. But the challenge is, sometimes you know you're working on an event and there's not great lighting or you're like in a shadow or like there's something weird going on with the photo, things like this. Well, VSCO is the perfect app, perfect app for photo editing!

Now I know though there are lots of us who will just like, you know, use the Instagram filters or whatever to edit our photos. But I find that, um, at least for me the results of those filters tend to be a little bit, I dunno, lackluster at best. Um, I think its the one size fits all thing. I like, honestly, I feel like that's it. I don't like that I can see a photo and be like, “Oh yeah, that was an instafilter.” I really prefer for my photos to stand out in a little bit of a different way and I want them to be unique to me. Another thing is, and I'm just going to be just straight up about it, the majority of my clients are women of color and I really struggle with the fact that many of the Instagram filters tend to look really great on non-melanated skin. And those of us who have a little bit more melanin, we tend not to, um, have such great results with the filters that are on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. So, I took it to the app store to find the best photo editing app. And VSCO is definitely, definitely it. You can update and you can edit just about every angle if you will, every piece of the photo. Um, and you can do so individually. So everything from light balancing to adjusting saturation, if you wanted to adjust for the- for a warmer skin tone if you wanted to, um, you know, just even to simple things, right? Like cropping and all this, all of that, you know, adjusting the edit, um, adjusting the angle at which the photo is sitting, all of those things, all of those things you can do. And VSCO does offer a ton, ton of different filters that you can use and filter recipes. And this is the thing and this is where I say, you know, that whole one size fits all thing and how I like to avoid it. Yeah, you can create recipes all your own.

So let's say that you know that you regularly are taking clients in a particular place. Let's say you always meet your clients at the same coffee shop and you know what the lighting is like at that coffee shop at that particular time of day or sitting at that particular table, whatever. You can create recipes and save them inside of your VSCO account where um, you know, every time you take a photo with a client in that place, you can just apply that recipe. It's your own custom filter, which is great. Like, I don't know about you, but being able to just automate all of the things, save them as a template, and then just if you have to make a little tweak, you can make small adjustments versus having to edit a photo from top to bottom. Yikes! Yeah. All of that's available in VSCO's functionality, which is another reason why I really, really love it.

I have to say, um, just about every photo that I post is run through VSCO before I post it, with the exception of the images that I get back from my photographer, which I'll be honest, sometimes I still do run through VSCO. If I see that like, Oh, I would change this a little bit or something then I might make, make some adjustments. But you know, otherwise, just about every photo that I take, because again, we're taking photos on the go. Lots of us, we're working with our iPhones, we're working with it, you know the best camera that we have on us, which is the one that's in our pocket. And you know what, if that's what you got, that's what you've got. So the best way to be able to elevate photos is with clean editing. VSCO definitely makes that possible.

Number four is Planoly. If you've not heard of Planoly before, Planoly is an app that will allow you to plan out and schedule your Instagram posts. Now everyone knows if you are going to be marketing your business on social media, one of the best ways to do that is to show up consistently on social, right? And what a burden that can be, especially if you're actually running a business that's making money. Now, I don't know about you, but my schedule is constantly filled to the brim with tasks that need to be done. Everything from mixing the henna paste, prepping it, getting things ready for my clients, actually serving them, sending out promotional content to collaborators, doing the things you know, being present in our business. And not to mention just being present in life like I don't know about you guys, but I've got laundry to do. You feel me?

So one of the things that I love to do is to batch create my content for social media. And what does that look like exactly? Well, I sit down and I plan out 30 days and, sometimes more, of social media content at a time and then all of that content is managed inside of Planoly. Now, Planoly does give you the option for it to automatically post your content to Instagram on your behalf as well. And actually it now offers the functionality for you to do that to Facebook and uh, to Pinterest also. I will give you this little tidbit though as an advice, I actually don't recommend using and the auto-post functionality. Instead I choose to manually post everyday.

So what happens is I upload all of my content into Planoly and then I set the date and time at which I want it to publish. Once that date and time actually arrives, Planoly sends me a mobile notification saying, "Hey Chelsea, you've got a post that needs to go alive" and all I have to do is click 'okay'. It copies the, um, the text of the caption that I've already written to my clipboard and it opens up Instagram and then I manually post it in that way. Doing that serves as a mental reminder for me as well to be sure to engage on social today. So it's a great resource for being able to keep on top of social media, um, while also doing everything else in life.

Now you may not be like me, you might not have the time or the drive or the desire to post-, to schedule out a post as far as I do. But even if you were to schedule out, I don't know, a week's worth of content, wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to just sit back and go, okay, yeah, I already know what I'm posting on Wednesday of next week, so that you don't have to feel stressed. And, like, worrying what photo do I post, what do I say? And so forth. It makes it so, so much easier when you can just have the things done and ready to go. And Planoly is it now Planoly also does have a web based platform so you can check in and do all of the same planning, scheduling, all of that, from your desktop or from your laptop. But I have to be honest, I really, really love to use the Planoly app over the website.

Typically, I'll use the website, um, when I'm actually updating the caption information just because I'm so much more efficient when I can type versus, you know, writing it out on my phone. But when it comes to planning out the way that my feed is going to look and so forth, I actually really, really prefer using the app instead. And so, again, I use the Planoly app literally every day. It is my reminder to go in and engage on social media. And that's one of those things that you just can't skip out on when you're running a business. And finally, number five, I want to share an app with you that I have not heard anyone talk about in henna circles. Anyone! Anyone! And honestly in the business circle and like, in the business arena as a whole, and I, so I feel like I'm sitting on a gold mine here, and I'm, I'm gonna share with you guys because well, I love you!

So there's an app that's called VIDEOASK and it's really, really interesting. Now I'm going to mention this app to you because one of the things that can set your business apart from everyone else's, is good customer service. The truth, is today, most clients, customers, consumers, they're not expecting to have a great experience because customer service is a dying art form, but us Hennapreneurs, we are on top of our game and we are constantly looking to wow and exceed the expectations of our clients, right? I know, I know. So, because we're a special breed, I'm going to share this app with you. It's called VIDEOASK. VIDEOASK is an app where you can send out messages to your clients. Um, and you can follow up with them. You can ask them questions either with a photo, you can send them a photo and ask them a question with text or you can actually send them a short video of you asking, you know, asking a question or following up with them.

Now, I love this app so, so much because it gives you the opportunity to connect with your clients after you've met and you-, it's personal. They know that that video was made just for them. So just think about it from the client's perspective, okay? Okay. You go and you get your henna done, right? And your henna artist at your appointment tells you, "Well, you know it's, you know, the paste is going to come off and when it comes off, it's going to be orange, and then it's going to get red, and then it's going to turn brown, and then it's going to be brown for about two weeks. And you're like, "Okay," right? And let's say it's your first time getting henna. And so when the pace comes off, you're like, "Oh, it really is orange. It really is light. Is it really going to darken up?" Right? And so you start to feel a little bit of uneasiness. Like, this is a thing, you guys, right? But can you imagine if you, the next day you get a message from your henna artist saying, "Hey, your stain is about 36 hours old now. I'd love to see how it's doing. Do you have any questions for me? How are you feeling about your stain? Are you loving it?" All of these things, right? How would it feel to have your henna artist reach back out to you just to see how you're enjoying the experience or to see if you have any questions? That is not something that your competitors are doing. I can guarantee it.

So I love this app because it provides the opportunity for me to reconnect with my clients after their appointment in a personal way, and it's a very short video. Basically, what happens is they receive a link, they click on the link and my video opens up. It's me. I mention them by name so they know, yes, this video was made just for me and it gives them the option to respond to me either, you know, with a photo or with a video of their own, which is great. This, also, you guys, you talk about wanting testimonials. If you want to hear back from your audience, this is a great way to do it.

When you use VIDEOASK because you do, you can ask them, you know, ask them about their experience, how they're enjoying their henna. Then you hear back from them directly using, you know, using their words with a photo. Maybe you want a stain photo, that's a great way for you to get them. And it just shows your clients that you're willing to go the extra mile, that you really care about them. You really want to know that they are enjoying their experience with their henna and that you're available to them if, and when, they have questions, or if they want to rebook. Don't overlook the importance of connecting with your audience even after money is spent. I feel like a lot of times that- I'm just going to say this, and then we're going to like, and then I'll let you guys go. But so many times we treat our clients just as a transaction and we're super nice: "Oh yes," you know, "I can't wait to serve you," all the things. And we're super nice in the beginning and we're super nice when they sit down across the table from us, but then afterwards, we just kind of let them go off into the world. And if you want to build a sustainable business, the best way for you to do that is to take care of the clients that you have existing already. It is so much more affordable for your business. It is so much more healthy for your business as well for you to take care of the clients that exist presently versus having to go out and acquire new ones. So one of the best ways that you can do that is through efficient and regular customer service processes in your business. And here's one where you know it's super simple. It's an app, you can download it, it's free, it costs nothing. All you have to do is just remember to follow up with your clients, which you can totally set a reminder for yourself to do, right? I know.

Okay, so there you have it. Those are five of my favorite apps for running my henna business. I hope that you love them. I hope, you know, that you're willing to give them a try. I'll have information about all of the apps that I mentioned for you in the show notes so that you can go and grab those for yourself as well because you need them! You need them! I wouldn't recommend them if they weren't, like, everything. If you find that there's one that you hadn't tried before and that you were wanting to try, let me know, tell me about it. You can join us inside of the Hennapreneur Community on Facebook. It's a free group. You're welcome to join us there and share your favorite apps as well. I'm looking forward to hearing!

Hey babe! I wanted to give you a quick thank you for tuning into the show today. That was super cool of you to hang with me all the way until the end. Of course, I've got all the links that you might need from this episode inside of the show notes that you can find at hennapreneur.com/podcast.

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