Hi, I’m Reisha Parkinson. I’m owner and founder of Reisha NYC here in New York City.
I was inspired to start my own beauty business, doing hair and make-up, because I really wanted to grow as an artist. And I was sick of working for somebody else, for minimum wage and working their schedule and basically trying to make their dreams come true when I wanted to make my dreams come true.
I basically got the idea because I was working at a Blow-Out bar in New York City, it’s very popular here. But the hours that they offer aren’t really conducive to the hours that the clientele needs. A lot of my clients are business professionals, they are new moms, and they don’t have time to get to the Salon, or they need to be ready for work earlier that 7am. My clients kind of started joking around with me a little bit. Like ‘Hey do you do house calls? Do you want to come to my house at 6am and get me ready for work?’ And I thought, well why not?
So I put together a little kit, just with a backpack, with all the tools I would need to go to do somebodies hair at their house. And I printed off a business card and I started passing out my business card.
So I started doing house calls at times that would not be available at a Salon or at a Blow-Out bar. Most of my house calls were early morning, for the women that still needed to look good, they needed to look sharp for whatever they had going on in the day. And they also wanted to feel beautiful. Little by little it was like planting seeds, I started getting more clientele, I started getting more referrals. I eventually was able to quit the Blow-Out bar I was working at, I was able to quit the Salon I was working at. And now I have my own business.
The biggest risk I face at the moment is growing too quickly. I want to invest into advertising, and it’s all online advertising. But I have to make sure that I have the clientele and I have the cash flow to pay for that, which would produce more business for me. But, you see it’s a double edged sword, it’s a balance, that you have to look at on a daily basis and you have to pay attention to it on a daily basis or, you know, you could go under. So that’s kind of my biggest risk thing at the moment and I think that that kind of always continues as you do business. I also have a savings account that I saved, it’s about 6 months of income. You want to have a ‘rainy-day’ fund if you want to be an entrepreneur because you never know what could happen.
I really believe in dreaming big and it’s my dream to have my name and have my company branded. I would love to own my own make-up line, my own hair product line. I think that would be really amazing to own your own brand and to really brand my name, brand my business and brand my concept.
Now I am a full on business owner and entrepreneur and I love it.