Today we’d like to introduce you to Paula Roseberry.
Hi Paula, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story of becoming a hairstylist started when I was 19. I was attending HACC for business and marketing and was actually supposed to go abroad to college in Limerick, Ireland. Around that same time, I started assisting at the salon where I had grown up getting my own hair done. I quickly realized I was on the wrong path for me and decided to stay home and do an apprenticeship at that very salon instead.
I had the opportunity to apprentice under some incredibly talented hairstylists, and I’m pretty sure all of them have gone on to own their own salons as well. I was really lucky to learn from them and grow alongside them. Not every part of that experience was easy, though, and after working there for a few years, I took a month off to collect myself and figure out what I wanted my next move to be.
I eventually started working at another salon that I absolutely loved at first. I was promoted to salon manager, and over time I learned a lot about leadership, but I also learned how much a work environment can affect you. I reached a point where I was working incredibly hard, struggling to get by, and no longer happy going to work. I remember thinking that if I was going to work this hard anyway, I would rather work even harder building something of my own, with the hope that someday I wouldn’t struggle so much and, more importantly, that I could actually love going to work every day.
So that’s what I did, and Alchemy was born.
I had a lot of help making it happen, especially from my amazing husband and family. I signed the papers just a few days before my 24th birthday, and Alchemy officially opened in October 2016.
I had a LOT to learn about being a small business owner, especially when it came to managing people. I’m not proud of every decision I made along the way, but I’m grateful for what those decisions taught me because they helped make me the boss and business owner I am today.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my career is that the environment really is the foundation. Of course the work matters, education matters, taking care of your clients and continuing to grow as a stylist matters. However, none of those things thrive in an environment where people aren’t happy. Because of my own experiences in salons, I wanted Alchemy to be a place where clients felt at home, but also where the people working there felt safe, supported and genuinely happy to come to work.
Ten years later, my idea of success looks a little different than it did when I first opened. I’ve had employees move on from the industry and others go on to become successful in it, and I’ve learned that I don’t want a huge team or a chaotic, packed salon just for the sake of saying we’re growing. Right now, I have one employee and I’ve intentionally chosen to keep it that way for a while. I adore her, we are booked and busy and we actually get to be excited to come to work together. To me, that’s success and appreciate her every day.
My clients have also shaped my career, and honestly the way I look at life and people, in ways I never could have anticipated when I was 19. When you do someone’s hair for years, you end up walking alongside them through so many different chapters of their lives. You celebrate the good things with them, but you’re also there through loss, illness, major life changes and some of their hardest seasons. Those experiences have taught me a lot about people, perspective and what really matters.
I’ve had clients go through cancer treatments and eventually come back to my chair afterward. One small thing I’ve chosen to do is make that first haircut back my gift to them. It doesn’t change what they’ve been through, but it’s my way of celebrating that moment with them. Hair may be what initially brought us together, but after all these years, I’ve learned that what happens behind the chair can mean so much more than hair.
After a very fast ten years, countless client experiences, plenty of mistakes, a lot of growth and a career that looks very different from what 19-year-old me thought her life would look like, I feel incredibly lucky to be where this journey has taken me. I’m proud of what Alchemy has become, but I’m also excited that I still don’t know exactly where it will take me next.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t feel like anything about my career has been particularly smooth, but what fun would it be if it was? Where is the growth in that?
One thing I struggled with, especially early in my career, was how deeply I felt the things my clients were going through. Very early on, I had a client who I spent almost an entire day with doing her hair and nails. My job that day was simply to give her a beautiful, fun day. She was terminally ill, and our conversations and that day still cross my mind often. That is the type of experience that doesn’t leave you, but I am forever grateful that I was able to be that person for her. I think that was when I realized that if I could be a pillar of support for people, I wanted to be.
The struggle with that has always been learning how to carry those experiences without letting my own heart and mind take a beating. As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve started looking at them less as sad experiences and more as powerful lessons. Everyone is struggling with something. And women…women are so strong. Never underestimate what a woman may be carrying on any given day, even when she is going about her normal schedule as if today is no different from yesterday. Working so closely with people for all these years has completely changed the way I look at others and at life in general.
That has also influenced how I run my salon. I have worked primarily with women throughout my career, and we all have a lot of moving parts and tabs open at any given time. Hairstylists also work incredibly closely together. Sometimes we spend more waking hours with our coworkers than we do with our own families, so the environment matters.
I’ve experienced what happens when that environment isn’t healthy, both in salons I’ve worked in and at times in my own. It taught me that when I’m hiring, someone’s character and fundamentals matter to me just as much as their skill level. I can help someone develop their technical skills, but I can’t teach someone their fundamental values. It matters to me that the people working at Alchemy understand what I want this salon to represent and contribute to the environment we’re creating. Now when I interview someone, I’m not only interviewing them as a hairstylist. I’m trying to learn how they work, how they treat people, what matters to them and whether we’re a good fit for each other. That approach has worked really well for me.
One of the greatest challenges of my career, though, was having to close Alchemy during COVID. My husband and I are both self-employed, our daughter was only one at the time, and suddenly neither of us knew what the future looked like. On top of worrying about my own family, I felt an enormous responsibility for my employees and their ability to take care of themselves. That was a very heavy weight to carry.
I worried that I would wake up one day and everyone would decide they had to move on because we couldn’t work. I didn’t know how long we would be closed or whether I would even have a business to come back to. The bills certainly didn’t stop just because we weren’t allowed to open.
That experience also showed me just how incredible the community around Alchemy was. I had clients who believed in us enough to purchase large gift cards to use when we reopened, order products from us and simply check in to make sure I was doing okay. I also had a great team of employees at the time. We pulled together, reopened as soon as we were allowed to, adapted to all of the changes that came with COVID and kept going.
It definitely wasn’t smooth, but looking back, I think the difficult parts of my career have taught me just as much as the successful ones. They’ve shaped the way I treat my clients, the way I lead my salon and, probably most importantly, the way I look at people.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As hairstylists, we constantly need to stay educated, keep up with trends and techniques, and sometimes try things that scare us in order to learn.
Over the years, I have somewhat accidentally become the stylist for a lot of clients dealing with fine or thinning hair and hair loss. I love being able to help, so if I can offer advice, make adjustments behind the chair or do anything that helps someone love their hair again, I’m all about it. Because of that, I’ve considered becoming a trichologist in the future and am currently researching what that could look like for me. I would love to be able to better help people who start to feel disconnected from their hair as they age, experience thinning or go through other changes.
One thing I’ve consistently been told by clients is that I’m a great listener when it comes to what they want, and just as importantly, what they don’t want. That is a really important skill to me. Everyone has heard someone say, “My stylist didn’t listen to what I wanted.” I will listen. I’ll sit down with someone, talk through their hair struggles, be honest about what is realistic and come up with a plan with them.
As far as what I’m known for technically, that seems to change every few years depending on what I’m learning and what education I’m bringing back to my own chair. That’s one of my favorite things about this industry. Sometimes you learn one small detail in a class and suddenly it changes the way you approach something you’ve been doing for years. You add it to what you already know, and an entirely new door opens.
For a long time, I’ve been known for freehand balayage. I still love it, but over the last few years, and especially this past year, I’ve expanded the way I approach color. I’ve been studying placement and depth more than ever before and really focusing on creating dimension. One appointment I might be creating a soft, lived-in blonde and the next someone wants to be as blonde as humanly possible. I enjoy both, but I think one of my absolute favorites is a dark, hand-painted balayage. There is something so exciting to me about creating a dimensional, soft brunette.
A surprisingly big part of this career is also learning patience. I definitely haven’t always had it, but developing patience has made me a better stylist. Even something as simple as covering gray requires the right formulation and the patience to let the color do what it needs to do. I have a lot of gray coverage clients, and I’ve learned that they would much rather sit an extra ten minutes than leave with grays that aren’t fully covered. As a gray-haired human myself, I can confirm!
More than anything, I think what sets me apart is that I genuinely love learning. I want to know about new technology, ingredients, techniques, products, brands and the science behind why something works. I love trying new things and bringing what I learn back into the salon to see how it can improve what we do. I won’t even sell a product unless I’ve tried it myself first. If I’m going to recommend something to a client, I want to understand how it works and feel confident standing behind it.
When I think about what I’m most proud of, it isn’t one particular technique or service. I’m proud that after all these years, I haven’t become complacent. I’m still excited to take a class, try something new, ask questions and realize there is more for me to learn. This industry changes constantly, and I’ve changed right along with it. I think that willingness to keep learning has allowed me to become a better stylist for the people who trust me with their hair, and that’s something I’m really proud of.
What makes you happy?
Nothing makes me happier than my family. I have an amazing, supportive husband, Kevin, and an incredibly smart, sweet and witty daughter named Piper. I miss them every second I’m away from them. We have such a fun, weird little family. They make me laugh every day and make even my hardest days worth it.
Piper is my absolute favorite human on this planet. I still look at her sometimes and can’t believe I created her with my own body. She is hilarious, curious, kind and completely herself, and getting to watch her grow into her own person is one of my favorite parts of life. I feel incredibly lucky that I get to be her mom.
I’m also one of four children and we are all still very close. We all still live near each other, and because my siblings and I married young, I don’t really even think of my in-laws as “in-laws” anymore. They’ve been part of my life for so long that they’re just my siblings too. I have a bunch of hilarious, smart and beautiful nieces and nephews who I adore.
My parents have always created the kind of home with a revolving door. Their kids and grandkids are constantly coming and going because everyone genuinely wants to be there. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized just how special and rare that is.
I love my business and I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve built, but it has never come first and it never will. My family has always been my main priority. At the end of the day, success doesn’t mean very much to me if I don’t have the people I love to share my life with. Being surrounded by my family and having the kind of bond we do is what makes me happiest.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.alchemysalonandcolorbar.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alchemysalonandcolorbar
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alchemysalonandcolorbar
- Other: https://alchemy-salon-and-color-bar.book.app/
